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TALES OF TIOGA 



Tales of Tioga 

Pennsylvania 
and 

Its People 

By 

ROBERT KENNEDY YOUNG 



PRESS OF 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

EAST WASHINGTON SQUARE, PHILADELPHIA 



F/6'7 



/ 



Copyright, 1916, by Robert K. Young, Wellsboro, Pa. 



Set up by the North American 
Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company 



y 

DEC 13 1916^ 



TO 

Edwin A. Van Valkenburg 

AND 

Frederic W. Fleitz 

CONTEMPORARY SPECIMEN PRODUCTS OF 

TIOGA COUNTY 



FOREWORD 

The following articles — except the In- 
dian paper — were written to break the 
monotony of travel from Wellsboro to 
Harrisburg during the last three years. 
Nothing of the kind was needed during 
the return trip, for merely to keep one's 
destination in mind was sufficient to dis- 
pel ennui. If any of my friends find in 
reading, a tithe of the entertainment I 
have found in writing these articles, I shall 
be gratified. I entertain the hope that 
they may direct the attention of some one 
to the subject — Tioga County — who will 
give it better and more serious treatment. 

R. K. Y. 

En route April, 1916. 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. John Inscho Mitchell — An Ap- 
preciation 11 

II. A Sojourn with ''Queen Anne" 37 

III. Lincoln — A Phase 68 

IV. Thomas Hargadon, alias Thomas 

Harden 78 

V. The Last Aboriginal Inhabitant 

OF Tioga County • 97 

VI. Wellsboro — Tioga County .... 122 



JOHN INSCHO MITCHELL 

AN APPRECIATION 

There have been greater Statesmen, for 
he lacked intellectual initiative and the 
power of formative thinking. There have 
been greater jurists, for his reverence for 
English jurisprudence, upon which ours is 
based, was so profound that he was unable 
to expand or adjust the spirit of the law 
to meet the changing conditions of the 
multitude. He was not a great leader, for 
he lacked imagination and a quality of in- 
tellectual and moral intrepidity essential 
to great leadership. But no man ever 
brought a loftier or more disinterested and 
unselfish purpose to the discharge of pub- 
lic duties ; and no man ever sat as a Judge 
with a higher ideal of the sanctity of the 
office and succeeded better in expressing 
in the actual administration of the office 
this ideal. 

John Inscho Mitchell was born at Mit- 
chell's Creek, Tioga Township, Tioga 
County, Pennsylvania, July 28, 1838, and 
died at Wellsboro in the same county, Au- 
gust 20, 1907. 

He was descended from Robert Mitchell, 

11 



12 TALES OF TIOGA 

who came to America about the year 1751. 
Some evidence indicates Ayrshire, Scot- 
land, as the place of his ancestors' nativity. 
He certainly came from the south of Scot- 
land. This Robert Mitchell, the great 
grandfather of John Inscho Mitchell, lo- 
cated in what is now Orange County, New 
York, and married Mercy Tyler. Three 
sons were born of this marriage — Richard, 
Thomas and Robert — all of whom in early 
manhood removed to Southport, Chemung 
County, New York. A year later Richard 
and Thomas went up the Tioga River by 
canoe and settled near the mouth of what 
has since been known as Mitchell's Creek. 
This stream is a tributary of the Tioga 
River and joins it about four miles south 
of Lawrenceville and about three miles 
north of Tioga village, all in the present 
county of Tioga, Pennsylvania. 

In 1792 Richard Mitchell married Ruby 
Keeney, born in Hartford, Connecticut, 
daughter of Thomas Keeney, born in Scot- 
land. Thomas Keeney was a Revolution- 
ary soldier. 

Richard and Ruby (Keeney) Mitchell 
had six children. Thomas Keeney, the 
second son and fourth child, was born 
August 5, 1799, and was the father of the 



JOHN INSCHO MITCHELL 13 

subject of this memoir. The first daughter 
of this union, Lovina Mitchell, married 
John Inscho, after whom Judge Mitchell 
was named. 

Thomas Keeney Mitchell was a promi- 
nent citizen in this community and spent 
his entire life of sixty-two years in the 
scenes of his childhood. On the homestead 
farm in 1826 he erected the first brick 
house built in Tioga County, the bricks 
being made on his own farm. 

In 1826 he married Elizabeth Anne Roe, 
a native of Delhi, Delaware County, New 
York, where she was born August 15, 
1809. He died August 28, 1861. His 
widow survived him until February 15, 
1887. The family of Elizabeth Anne Roe 
Mitchell were kin of Ethan Allen, of Revo- 
lutionary fame. 

Ten children were bom to this union as 
follows : Marietta, Almira, Rowena, Ruby, 
Thomas, Jefferson, John Inscho, Elizabeth, 
Emily and Jane. All of the daughters ex- 
cept one (Ruby, who died early) married 
substantial men of the Northern Tier. 
Emily married a young Scotchman whose 
parents immigrated to this country while 
he was still a child, and who is now Presi- 
dent Judge of the Fourth Judicial District 



14 TALES OF TIOGA 

(Tioga County), Honorable David Cam- 
eron. 

John Inscho was the youngest of the 
three sons. He got his elementary edu- 
cation at the District School at Mitchell's 
Creek. He then taught for a time a Dis- 
trict School, a very educational experi- 
ence in itself, and had gained this start in 
life while still a minor. His preliminary 
education was completed at Lewisburg 
(now Bucknell) University, but before 
graduation the beginning of the Civil War 
altered his ambition and on August 16, 

1862, he enlisted as a volunteer and was 
mustered into service as Second Lieuten- 
ant, Company K, 136th Regiment, Pa. Vol. 
Inf. On March 16, 1863, he became cap- 
tain of the company. He was honorably 
discharged with his command May 29, 

1863, at the expiration of the term of en- 
listment. The most notable engagement 
in which he and his regiment took part 
was the battle of Fredericksburg. 

After returning from the war Mitchell 
studied law under F. E. Smith, Esq., of 
Tioga, and was admitted to the Bar in 
1864. 

In 1869 he was elected District Attorney 
and served a full term of three years. Dur- 



JOHN INSCHO MITCHELL 15 

ing this period he edited, for a time, the 
Wellsboro Agitator. In October, 1871, he 
was elected to the Pennsylvania House of 
Representatives. He served continuously 
in the annual sessions of that body by re- 
election until the close of the session of 
1876. In the fall of 1876 he was nomi- 
nated and elected to the lower House of the 
Congress, and was chosen as his own suc- 
cessor in 1878. His term of office in the 
House of Representatives at Washington 
expired March 3, 1881, and on the follow- 
ing day he took his seat in the upper House 
of the Congress as a Senator of the United 
States from Pennsylvania, having been 
elected to that office by the Legislature, 
February 23, 1881. His term in the Sen- 
ate ended March 3, 1887, and he returned 
home and resumed the practice of law. 
The same year he was elected President 
Judge of the Fourth Judicial District, com- 
prising his native county, and took his seat 
in January, 1888. At the end of a ten- 
year term he was re-elected, the second 
term beginning with January, 1898. In 
1900 he was elected to the Superior Court 
and took his seat on that bench in Janu- 
ary, 1901. 

During the first session of the Court 



16 TALES OF TIOGA 

after he entered it, which sitting was held 
at Scranton, he was stricken with illness 
from which he never recovered and which 
totally incapacitated him physically and 
mentally. 

The foregoing catalogue of dates and 
facts gives no indication of the character 
of the man who fitted into these dates and 
facts. They are the mile-posts of a very 
remarkable life journey. But they might 
he the record of the career of a successful 
time-serving, office-seeking politician, 
whereas they are not. It will be noted that 
from the year 1869 to the year 1901, Mr. 
Mitchell was almost continuously in pubKc 
office, but it can be proved that during this 
whole period he never, in the ordinary 
sense of the term, was a candidate for 
office. I doubt if the public career of any 
man in American history affords a better 
example of office seeking the man than in 
his case. To illustrate how persistently 
this fortune pursued him, I shall speak 
only of those instances of which I had 
some personal knowledge, more or less inti- 
mate, at the time of their happening. 

In the early fall of 1876, I accompanied 
my father to the Centennial Exposition 
at Philadelphia. He stopped on the way at 



JOHN INSCHO MITCHELL 17 

Williamsport to attend a congressional 
conference for the nomination of a Repub- 
lican candidate from the then Sixteenth 
Pennsylvania District. The Honorable 
Sobieski Boss, of Potter County, repre- 
sented the district in Congress at the time 
and was a candidate for re-nomination. 
Being a lad, I was permitted to follow my 
father into the room in the Park Hotel, 
where the conference was held, this being 
my first introduction to politics. The con- 
ference nominated Judge Ross to succeed 
himself. He and my father had been many 
years previously fellow clerks in a land 
office at Coudersport and had then formed 
a close friendship which had endured. 
After a formal motion had been adopted 
making the nomination unanimous, my 
father, a conferee from Tioga County, pro- 
duced a letter from Judge Ross thanking 
the conference and declining the nomina- 
tion because of ill health. When the read- 
ing of Judge Ross' letter was concluded, 
my father presented the name of John I. 
Mitchell, and he was speedily nominated. 
Mitchell was in Philadelphia attending the 
Exposition, having just finished the labors 
of his sixth consecutive session in the 
Pennsylvania Legislature. My father, and 

2 



18 TALES OF TIOGA 

in fact all his friends in Williamsport, were 
naturally desirous of informing Mitchell of 
his new honors, but no one knew his ad- 
dress. Jerome B. Potter, of Tioga County, 
was also in Philadelphia at the time and 
discovered next morning a news dispatch 
from Williamsport announcing the nomi- 
nation. Potter knew Mitchdl's address 
and lost no time in bringing the dispatch 
to his attention. Mitchell's reception of 
the news as described by Potter was char- 
acteristic. He showed considerable indig- 
nation at the liberty taken with his name 
by some unknown and irresponsible news- 
paper reporter, repudiated the whole ca- 
nard and marched himself off to the Expo- 
sition grounds and was lost to the world 
for the day. 

In the legislative session of 1881 occurred 
one of the most dramatic and fiercely con- 
tested struggles for a seat in the United 
States Senate which has enlivened the polit- 
ical history of the State. The issue was 
joined between the friends of Galusha A. 
Grow, of Susquehanna County, and those 
of Henry W. Oliver, of Allegheny County. 
The term in the Senate of William A. Wal- 
lace, Democrat, expired March 4, 1881. 
The Legislature chosen at the November 



JOHN INSCHO MITCHELL 19 

election in 1880 was overwhelmingly Re- 
publican. Grow, apparently the stronger 
of the two candidates, was not supported 
by the then acknowledged leader of the 
Republican Party in the State, J. Donald 
Cameron. The Allegheny delegation de- 
clared for Oliver and they were joined by 
the entire membership of both Houses 
from Philadelphia under the leadership of 
James McManus. This made a caucus 
nomination of Grow impossible and the 
result was a refusal on the part of Grow's 
friends to participate in the party caucus. 
The consequence of this action on the part 
of Grow's friends was to make impossible 
the election of Oliver, the party nominee. 
And the bitterness engendered finally 
reached a stage which prevented the elec- 
tion not only of either of the avowed candi- 
dates but of any person identified with 
either of the contending factions. A de- 
tailed narrative of this most exciting con- 
test has been recently written by that very 
painstaking and accomplished biographer, 
Frank Willing Leach, in a sketch of the life 
of the subject of this memoir. But the 
facts above given are sufficient for the 
writer's purpose. Inconclusive joint bal- 
loting continued from January 4th to and 



20 TALES OF TIOGA 

including February 22nd. During this 
deadlock a small group of the devoted 
friends of Mitchell had not been idle. Lewis 
Emery, Jr., a member of the State Senate 
from the district embracing Tioga County 
with others, Charles S. Wolfe, then and 
for many years prior a Representative 
in the Legislature from Union County, 
Thomas V. Cooper, Representative from 
Delaware County, and Jerome B. Niles 
and Charles Tubbs, Representatives from 
Tioga County, were all active in Mitchell's 
behalf. Constantly on the ground and sup- 
plementing their efforts were Hugh Young, 
of Tioga, who had been a member of the 
House in 1877, and who still retained an 
intimate acquaintance with many persons 
prominent in State politics; and David 
Cameron, also of Tioga, Mitchell's law part- 
ner and brother-in-law, whose acquaint- 
ance was also extensive. These formed the 
Board of Strategy of Mitchell's invisible 
army. Charles S. Wolfe had been a fellow 
student with Mitchell at Lewisburg and 
had later served with him several terms 
in the Legislature. A strong friendship 
and admiration had long been maintained 
between the two, partly, no doubt, because 
they possessed certain qualities in common 



JOHN INSCHO MITCHELL 21 

and partly because each recognized that the 
other possessed certain admirable quali- 
ties lacking in himself. 

Wolfe was a very active, resourceful, 
bold and courageous man, and because 
of these qualities and the great respect in 
which he was held by his colleagues was 
peculiarly adapted for leadership in such 
a crisis. Meantime, Mitchell was pursuing 
the unperturbed and even tenor of his ways 
in Washington in the discharge of his 
duties as a Member of Congress. 

On February 23, 1881, he was elected to 
the United States Senate on the first ballot 
in which his name was mentioned. 

In 1900 the Republican Party nominated 
Josiah R. Adams, of Philadelphia, for 
Judge of the Superior Court. Soon after 
his nomination the North American news- 
paper, of Philadelphia, impugned his fit- 
ness for the position, and as the campaign 
progressed this newspaper's accusations 
increased with an intensity and particu- 
larity never theretofore equaled in the 
political history of the State. Shortly be- 
fore the election Adams resigned the nomi- 
nation under fire, and the duty of filling the 
vacancy devolved upon the Republican 
State Committee. The party leaders were 



22 TALES OF TIOGA 

badly demoralized by the North Ameri- 
can's exposures and Adams' resignation. 
This action on Adams' part was interpreted 
by the people of the State as an admission 
of guilt. This belief was a little later con- 
firmed by Adams' suicidal death in the 
Hotel Flanders. 

William A. Stone, then Governor; John 
P. Elkin, then Attorney General ; I. W. Dur- 
ham, then political boss of Philadelphia, 
and several other leaders met in Philadel- 
phia to consider what was best to be done 
in the crisis to save the party and to repair 
the blunder made by the bosses in the 
nomination of Adams. Quay was in 
Florida, but as the election was only about 
a month distant a call for a meeting of 
the Republican State Committee must be 
issued without delay. And, of course, 
under the accepted order of things politi- 
cal, all details great and small must be ar- 
ranged for the State Committee in advance 
of the meeting. In the exigency in which 
the leaders found themselves they turned 
to Mitchell with great unanimity. They 
believed that his nomination would serve a 
double purpose, the spiking of the guns 
of the North American, and the rallying to 
the Party standard of the independent ele- 



JOHN INSCHO MITCHELL 23 

ments throughout the State which had 
been vigorously led by Mitchell, Charles S. 
Wolfe, John Stewart, George W. Merrick, 
George E. Mapes, and others, in 1881 and 
1882, and in less degree during subsequent 
years. Quay was reached in Florida and 
assented to Mitchell's nomination. All 
these machinations were conducted with- 
out any communication with Mitchell what- 
ever. His son-in-law, Frederic W. Fleitz, 
was at the time Deputy Attorney General 
and a member of the State Committee 
from Lackawanna County. Fleitz was sum- 
moned to Philadelphia. The plan was laid 
before him and he strongly objected, view- 
ing the matter with regard to Mitchell's 
best interest. His objection is mentioned 
because subsequent events proved the 
soundness of his judgment. 

Mitchell had been re-elected in Novem- 
ber, 1897, to a full term on the Common 
Pleas bench in Tioga County. He was not 
in robust health and was financially unable 
to contribute to a State campaign. These 
were among the considerations which af- 
fected Fleitz's judgment. However, Fleitz 
yielded and was commissioned to locate 
Mitchell and obtain his consent. He was 



24 TALES OF TIOGA 

found to be visiting his son, George D. 
Mitchell, in a suburb of Washington. 

When the proposition was unfolded he 
met it with derision, denied the wisdom of 
every argument in its favor and promptly 
refused point blank. Fleitz, having been 
enlisted in the cause, persisted with char- 
acteristic loyalty, and finally Mitchell con- 
sented on condition that his nomination 
must come by unanimous action of the 
State Committee, and that he would not be 
expected to make any contribution of 
money to the campaign. But even this 
conditional consent was not obtained until 
after Mitchell had exhausted his persua- 
sive powers in favoring the nomination of 
Judge Samuel W. Pennypacker, then of the 
Philadelphia Common Pleas Courts. At a 
meeting of the Committee a few days later 
Mitchell was unanimously nominated, and 
within a month thereafter was elected to 
the Superior Court. 

Judge Mitchell possessed a very thor- 
ough and exact elementary education, 
and in the metaphysical, juridical and 
philosophical fields of knowledge he had 
acquired profound learning. His natural 
habit of mind was introspective — subjec- 
tive rather than objective. And while to 



JOHN INSCHO MITCHELL 25 

his casual acquaintances his character may- 
have appeared simple and easily under- 
stoodi, it seemed to those who knew him 
intimately to be made up of many com- 
plexities and contradictions. Paradoxically 
it may be said that he was energetic but 
not industrious. He possessed the power 
of intensive work, mental and physical, but 
his energies were not systematically di- 
rected nor well conserved Sedentary 
meditation* environed in clouds of tobacco 
smoke was an habitual indulgence. But 
when by a prick of conscience or physical 
inclination he was roused to action of any 
kind his pace would have been a killing one 
to the average man, and was unquestion- 
ably deleterious to his own health. While 
books were undoubtedly his most lasting 
and constant pleasure in life, he had an- 
other field of activity and relaxation only 
less important. He had as a gift of nature 
the skill of mechanical contrivance, the in- 
ventive faculty in a marked degree. He 
delighted in the use of all kinds of edged 
tools, and he was not only a scientific but a 
very practical gardener and flower cultur- 
ist. He was fond of using his hands, and 
they were very deft servants, whether 
wielding a pen or a carpenter's hammer. 



26 TALES OF TIOGxA. 

His early training in farming developed an 
interest in all subjects relating to agricul- 
ture which he never lost. And while on 
the bench he was wont to break out from 
time to time, especially during the Court 
vacation in summer, with a series of ar- 
ticles contributed to a local newspaper, on 
some timely topic relating to farming, as, 
for instance — the best means for prevent- 
ing potato scale, or the use of the Bor- 
deaux mixture for spraying fruit trees. 

The farmer folk of the community, re- 
membering his early training, never re- 
garded his dissertations on farming and 
kindred subjects as those of a theorist 
merely, but gave his opinions great consid- 
eration. And there can be no doubt that 
his teachings left a lasting impression 
upon the farming interests of the county 
and helped to bring about the general im- 
provement in the agricultural arts which 
has been so obvious throughout the county 
during the last twenty years. 

Carpenters' tools as well as gardeners' 
tools were within his province and he used 
the former with as much skill as the latter. 
The writer had the distinction of holding 
such personal relations with him as to 
enjoy his free discussion of his own lit- 



JOHN INSCHO MITCHELL 27 

erary efforts — perhaps an address prepared 
for delivery before the faculty and student 
body of his alma mater, or a contribution 
to the North American Review, or some 
important judicial opinion. But I never 
knew him to express the same genuine 
pleasure at any of these efforts as that af- 
forded by the building of a certain wheel- 
barrow, with his own tools, in his own 
barn, with his own hands. 

His was naturally an intensely religious 
temperament, and his beliefs were of a 
very simple and orthodox character. He 
believed in the efficacy of prayer. But his 
was not a conscious spiritual effort to har- 
monize the laws governing his own soul 
with those governing the universe. His 
was not a prayer in the nature of an affir- 
mation of his right to a needful portion of 
the power which pervades all things and all 
space, as often and whenever he could at- 
tune his own nature to the Divine nature. 
Nor was his of the kind of those who be- 
lieve that the act of spiritual prostration, 
self-confession of sinfulness, reacts upon 
the person thus prostrated, resulting in a 
spiritual uplift and strengthening of the 
Divine spark within. His was the prayer 
of the self -convicted sinner to a merciful 



28 TALES OF TIOGA 

personal God ; an appeal by a suppliant to 
the bountiful and gracious giver of all good 
and perfect gifts. His prayer was in the 
nature of a supplication for a thing desired 
to an all-wise Providence which gave con- 
sideration to each separate appeal, and 
granted or refused the prayer dependent 
upon the spiritual well-being of the suppli- 
ant in the Divine judgment. His was a 
kind of primitive Christian piety, and his 
religious impulse seemed to spring from a 
belief in man's weakness rather than his 
strength. His was a religion of humilities 
rather than of masteries. 

At a time when the Liquor License Court 
had arrived in Tioga County, I encoun- 
tered him one morning "in chambers'' 
moving towards the court-room above. 
His physical appearance startled me, be- 
cause of his pallor of cheek and redness of 
the eyelids. I asked after his health and 
he replied that he felt very wretched, that 
he had not slept at all and had spent the 
greater part of the night on his knees in 
prayer for Divine guidance in the discharge 
of this dreadful extra-judicial duty which 
an unwise law had imposed upon him. 

Judge Mitchell was slightly above me- 
dium height and had a well proportioned 



JOHN INSCHO MITCHELL 29 

body. His movements were vigorous and 
sprightly, but always dignified. His large 
and well-shaped head, covered by a shock 
of tawny hair, which became white at an 
early age, was, however, his most attract- 
ive personal feature. Seated on the bench 
with his well-rounded shoulders visible, 
surmounted by his massive head and 
slightly curling wealth of white hair ; with 
his resonant and pleasant voice, dignified 
poise of body and perfect patience and 
courtesy of manner, he was in all outward 
requirements an ideal presiding officer, and 
was unquestionably a man of majestic 
mien. 

As a presiding officer in a Court of Jus- 
tice he approached very nearly to the ideal. 
His gracious dignity, inexhaustible pa- 
tience, fine and unbiased judgment; his un- 
swerving impartiality and profound legal 
learning inspired confidence in suitors and 
practitioners alike. The whole atmosphere 
of the Court was pervaded with a feeling 
of profound assurance that whatever hap- 
pened the result would not be chargeable 
to the fact that justice had not been judi- 
cially administered. 

In his Court those impartial eyes saw no 
difference between rich or poor, the power- 



30 TALES OF TIOGA 

ful or the humble, old or young, black or 
white, friend or foe. Even those solemn 
words ''Listen to the sentence of the law 
as pronounced by the Court," seemed to 
the listener to have been uttered not by an 
individual, but by an impersonal embodi- 
ment of the law itself — passionless justice 
tempered by mercy. 

His views of the ethical relations be- 
tween a presiding judge and the other 
members of the same Bar were thought by 
some to be too highly refined, too idealistic 
to make them practicable as a set of work- 
ing rules for the conduct of Court business. 
His view was that a judge is selected by 
the people of a district to preside over the 
deliberations of **the gentlemen of the 
Bar,'* all of whom (of whom the judge is 
merely one discharging different functions) 
are bound by the same oath, and should be 
imbued with the same purpose — the dis- 
covery of truth. So long as the individual 
gentlemen of the Bar did nothing to de- 
stroy his confidence this relation was main- 
tained. And in any ex-parte proceeding, 
any motion, writ, rule, order or decree was 
signed or granted without question when 
formally presented. But the slightest de- 
ception or bad faith resulted in total loss of 



JOHN INSCHO MITCHELL 31 

confidence which was never restored. How- 
ever, any loss of confidence did not extend 
beyond the individual involved. As might 
have been expected, this attitude towards 
the Bar exerted a very beneficial influence 
upon all who were worthy of such treat- 
ment. Every practitioner was most par- 
ticular about the preparation of his papers, 
about drawing proposed orders, about 
references to statutes, proofs of notice, etc. 
For after-discovered laxness or careless- 
ness, or worse, in these matters carried 
with it a terrible retribution, consisting of 
the most painstaking scrutiny thereafter 
of the most trivial motion, and a refusal on 
the slightest pretext until the motion was 
correctly reformed. 

The \vriter had cause, upon a certain 
time to call at Chambers, and found the 
Judge alone and meditating. He seemed 
pleased at the interruption and without any 
preliminary talk spoke in substance as fol- 
lows: "Do you think we gentlemen of the 
Bar meditate sufficiently upon our duties as 
officers of the Court? Do you think we 
keep uppermost in mind the fact that we 
are seekers after truth — the truth with 
which to promote justice — the justice upon 
which our institutions must rest ? If there 



32 TALES OF TIOGA 

is any laxness on our part in this respect, 
what can I do that is not being done to pro- 
mote or create such an atmosphere ? . . . 
We must remember that Plato says that 
the shadow of truth is light." 

Shall we say that from such ideas an 
attempt to formulate a working rule of 
conduct would result in futile idealism and 
break down and vanish like the "baseless 
fabric of (a) vision" ? "As a little leaven, 
so incalculable is the effect of one personal- 
ity on another," and merely to have con- 
ceived such thoughts, though never ut- 
tered, must have had a beneficent effect 
upon the Bar — must still have and must 
continue to have forever. 

Slight allusion has been made already to 
his skill in composition. He wrote with 
precision and elegance. And what has 
been said of Burke and Morley might have 
been said of Mitchell — that literature lost 
what public service gained. His legal opin- 
ions, formal addresses and serious compo- 
sitions are couched in very choice diction, 
and he was a master to a very marked 
degree of the difficult art of English com- 
position. An article, entitled "Political 
Bosses," contributed to the "North Ameri- 
can Review" for October, 1882, is a notable 



JOHN INSCHO MITCHELL 33 

illustration of his skill and acquirements in 
this high art. And his profound observa- 
tions on the real problems of democracy- 
seem upon re-reading to be as pertinent to 
present conditions as they could have been 
when the article was published. But we 
are considering the vehicle and not the 
message. 

One of the facts most noteworthy in con- 
nection with the deluge of printed matter 
now flooding the English-speaking world is 
the excellence, speaking generally, of the 
writing itself. This is especially true of 
the editorial writing in certain newspapers, 
and of the contents of monthly magazines 
generally. It would seem as if these writ- 
ings were the result of the composite ef- 
fort of many skillful hands, but they lack 
the virile individuality of a few of the 
present time writers, and of many in for- 
mer times. Mitchell had this quality of 
style and was capable of the sustained bril- 
Hancy of Morley; in an effort at an his- 
torical resume he was hardly excelled by 
McMaster; in stating personal views and 
opinions he was not inferior to Macaulay. 
I would venture to bottom this opinion 
upon the single article already referred to. 

It has been agreed in substance that no 
3 



34 TALES OF TIOGA 

man ever held in mind with firmer grasp at 
one and the same time than did Burke the 
problems of practical politics and a com- 
prehensive vision of the problems of the 
statesman. And yet he never attained to 
supreme responsibility in government. 
What is the explanation ? 

MitchelFs public career was in a sense a 
failure. With unquestioned ability of a 
high order, with unimpeachable integrity, 
he lacked some quality essential to great 
leadership. What were the causes for this 
partial failure? Not the proverbial in- 
gratitude of democracies, for his career 
tends to refute that absurd dogma. They 
were to be found in his moral and intellec- 
tual equipnient — in his temperament. He 
lacked the intrepidity and power of forma- 
tive thinking necessary. He was a student 
of the philosophic foundations of the 
science of jurisprudence. These studies 
were ardently pursued during a lifetime 
and tended to restrict and limit rather than 
to widen and liberalize his vision. Consid- 
ering his natural bent of mind this educa- 
tion was unfortunate for his usefulness. 
The result was that he became enmeshed in 
a system of negatives, of taboos. "Thou 
shalt not" rather than 'Thou shalt" seemed 



JOHN INSCHO MITCHELL 35 

to govern all his processes, moral and intel- 
lectual. Perhaps quite as serious a handi- 
cap to popular leadership and maximum 
usefulness was his insuperable diffidence 
and self-consciousness in his contact with 
others. This feeling amounted at times to 
a positive dread of public meetings or 
social functions. 

These moral and intellectual character- 
istics, and this social timidity would seem 
to have been the controlling factors in his 
career. 

-He was always profoundly deferential 
towards all with whom he came in contact, 
and this was especially noticeable with per- 
sons of intellectual distinction. But this 
deference was merely the expression of 
natural modesty and courtesy and did not 
indicate any lack of self -appreciation and 
self-esteem. For notwithstanding his unaf- 
fected modesty he was always conscious of 
his mental superiority, and never capitu- 
lated. 

No good purpose can be served in a 
sketch of this kind by dwelling upon the 
lingering years of his fatal illness. They 
were a long agony not only for him but for 
the ministering friends about him. His 
mind was not completely overthrown; the 



36 TALES OF TIOGA 

embers flared up from time to time with a 
mocking suggestion of the warmth and 
brilliance of happier days, until finally the 
end came. 

By his life he left a great heritage to his 
friends, his state and the country at large. 
No person who knew him withheld esteem, 
respect and even reverence. Nor were 
these feelings qualified by any mental 
reservation. For he was held blameless, 
honest in the highest sense, good and wise. 
"But you, Gods, will give us some faults 
to make us men." 



A SOJOURN WITH ^^ QUEEN ANNE" 

We were at ''Heartsease" in July and the 
trout fishing was poor. The party for the 
time being consisted of "the Guv," Louis, 
Henry and the scribe. After numerous 
private "Medicine Talks," Louie and Henry 
unfolded a detailed plan for a night cam- 
paign at the "Five Mile Dam" on Slate 
Run. To the Guv and myself. Slate Run 
was an unknown country, but we were as- 
sured by both the others, volubly assured 
by Louie, that below the apron of this dam 
lived whales, leviathans, and even battle- 
ships masquerading as brook trout. 

We took the evening train for Slate Run 
village at the mouth of the stream of that 
name, and the Guv and myself were es- 
corted by our guides to the leading hotel, — 
Ah, me! which caravansary was in fact a 
rum-shop kept for thirsty "hicks" (woods- 
men) from the "Black Forest" towards 
which we were headed. The bar was the 
sole attraction, the food and beds being 
vile. After our evening meal had been 
experienced, some one was forehanded 
enough to visit a lunch-room and procure a 
dozen mammoth ham sandwiches against 
the uncertainties of the next day. 

37 



38 TALES OF TIOGA 

As the log train which was to transport 
us to our destination started next morning 
about six o'clock, we retired betimes, leav- 
ing a five o'clock call with the bar-tender, 
he being the only person in authority vis- 
ible. But the charge seemed uncertain of 
execution, as the **bar-keep" was certainly 
overworked. 

The Guv was assigned to an apartment 
by himself, while the remainder of the 
party were given another room with two 
beds and one small window. We three drew 
lots for the whole bed, and I was lucky. The 
night was extremely warm, and the tem- 
perature was heightened by the discovery 
that the beds were made of a series of 
dirty, brown, coarse woolen blankets. The 
bare floors were pock-marked by the spiked 
shoes of the timber-jacks. And we learned 
upon inquiry that it was customary for 
them to retire to their beds with their 
clothes and shoes on — spikes and all. 

I was lying awake, expecting an attack 
from other occupants of the bed, when 
there came a gentle tapping, tapping at my 
chamber door — "Hello," I sang out, 
"what's the trouble ?" From the Guv : "Is 
that you. Bob?" "Yes," I replied. "Would 
you," said the Guv, "mind giving me a 



SOJOURN WITH "QUEEN ANNE" 39 

lift?" I tumbled out of bed and he ex- 
plained to me that the dimensions of his 
room were six by eight feet ; that the bed 
stood the short way of the room, and that 
as his long dimension was six feet four 
inches he must either "jack-knife" all 
night or maneuver the bed around to the 
long way of the room. With the help of the 
open door-space this feat was accomplished, 
and the Guv was then enabled to run his 
legs out between the rungs of the foot- 
board a couple of feet or less at pleasure. 

The next morning the bar-keep who had 
taken our request for a five o'clock call 
demonstrated that he was true to duty by 
ringing a hand-bell about the size of a park 
garbage-can^ through the narrow passage- 
way, from five to ten minutes — long 
enough, in fact, for us to make our meagre 
toilets and for Louie to seize my revolver 
and shout above the din that he was going 
out to abate the nuisance. Fortunately for 
the bar-keep, at that exact moment the 
hand-bell subsided. 

The log train started at the convenience 
of the train crew, and consisted of six or 
eight empty log cars drawn by a "stem- 
winder" engine. We were indifferently al- 
lowed by the crew to mount a car, taking 



40 TALES OF TIOGA 

our own chances on results. The weather 
was fair and hot, and the ride pleasant, and 
to the Guv and myself entirely novel, as we 
were strangers in a strange land. The 
railroad skirted the brink of a deep ravine, 
at the bottom of which lay Slate Run. The 
country through which we were passing 
had been entirely denuded of timber but 
was covered by a seemingly impenetrable 
jungle of briars and other forms of small 
vegetation, but no form of animal life or 
human habitation was visible, and the soli- 
tude was impressive. The railroad fol- 
lowed the right bank of the stream from 
the village, a distance of about six miles, 
until it met a considerable tributary of 
Slate Run called the Manifore. The road 
coursed up the valley of the latter stream a 
distance of a mile or more to a convenient 
crossing place, where it doubled on itself, 
running along the opposite bank back to 
the valley of Slate Run, thence up this 
stream for a distance of ten or twelve miles 
farther to the heart of the logging oper- 
ations in the Black Forest. 

Although this chapter is intended to be 
a literal transcript of actual happenings, 
a digression is justified for a quest after 
the etymology of the name *'the Manifore." 



SOJOURN WITH "QUEEN ANNE" 41 

I had never heard the name until I saw the 
stream, and it aroused my curiosity. It 
sounded neither like one of our usually 
beautiful Indian names nor was it prosaic 
American. Two years of intermittent in- 
quiries of those whom I thought might 
know elicited the following: The logging 
operations in progress at the time of our 
voyage were confined wholly to hemlock. 
The pine timber in the same region had 
been removed sixty or perhaps seventy 
years previously, and the pine lumbermen 
were really pioneers. The first pine jobber 
on Slate Run located a camp at the mouth 
of the stream in question, then unnamed. 
This jobber's name was Mannard, and his 
crew, for convenience, began soon to call 
the stream the Mannard Fork (of Slate 
Run). These mouth-filling words were in 
course of time quite naturally, it would 
seem, contracted into one word suggestive 
of the two originals, the facts being known, 
but rather mysterious when standing by 
itself — "The Manifore." I am reminded 
very often in my journey through life of 
an observation, oft repeated by one of my 
early preceptors, Doctor Moses Woolson, 
"If one knew the history of words one 
would know the history of the world." 



42 TALES OF TIOGA 

Between the sides of the angle made by 
the railroad at the crossing of the Mani- 
fore, stood a rough board shack known to 
the woodsmen and railroad: crew as 
"Queen Anne's/' or "Queen Anne's Palace." 
Louie had entertained us during a large 
part of the journey that morning with 
startling stories of the eccentric conduct 
of the occupant of the palace ; of her fitful 
moods backed by prompt and frequent gun- 
play. He had been employed some years 
before as clerk and storekeeper at some of 
the camps in the forest above us, and his 
impressions of this personage were gained 
at that time from the lurid tales of the 
hicks. 

Our party alighted at this point — about 
equi-distant (about six or seven miles) 
from Slate Run village and the nearest 
logging camp above us. 

The Board of Strategy was immediately 
convened, and it was resolved that Louie, 
with his French manners and handsome 
presence, should act as legate to the Queen, 
although I never quite understood the pur- 
pose of the embassy unless it was to find 
temporary lodgment for our small supply 
of sandwiches, blankets and lantern. 

I think that in order to assist the very 



SOJOURN WITH "QUEEN ANNE" 43 

limited number of persons for whom these 
lines are intended, to understand the utter 
lack of responsibility of the Guv and my- 
self for the harrowing train of ensuing 
events, the plan of campaign as originally 
unfolded by Henry and Louie before we 
left our own shanty should here be 
sketched in outline, inasmuch as after we 
reached Queen Anne's nothing happened 
as planned. 

The Plan: 

The party having reached the crossing 
of the Manifore was to separate into pairs, 
one pair trying the lower end of the "Laf- 
ferty," one of the tributaries of the Mani- 
fore which falls into the Manifore near 
Queen Anne's, and then fish down the 
Manifore, a distance of a mile or more to 
its mouth; thence down Slate Run to the 
Five Mile dam, where the party was finally 
to be reunited for the night campaign. 
Upon reaching the mouth of the Manifore 
a signal was to be left in shape of a pyra- 
mid of stones at a place agreed upon for 
the information of the other pair, if the 
one pair should pass that point first; the 
other pair being charged with the same 
duty in case they should arrive first. The 



44 TALES OF TIOGA 

other pair were to retrace their course 
along the railroad to a point above the 
mouth of the Manifore, descend to the 
main creek, and fish upstream as far as 
might be with a view of returning in time 
to reach the dam before dark, stopping en 
route at the mouth of the Manifore to 
leave the signal agreed upon in case the 
one pair had not passed that point first. 
So much for the plan ; what actually hap- 
pened follows: 

Louie sought and obtained an audience 
with Queen Anne, and as a result of the in- 
terview we were all ushered into her pres- 
ence. She was probably about fifty-five 
years old, tall, straight, broad and stout; 
her heavy sallow face was surmounted by 
a mass of dirty white hair worn "pompa- 
dour." Her costume was marked by two 
very striking features, the first being the 
length of her dress which came barely to 
the knees, her nether extremities being 
covered and decorated with heavy stock- 
ings with alternate green and white bands 
running around horizontally, and heavy 
high-topped shoes. The other and still 
more striking feature was a broad leather 
belt with a holster on either side, into each 
of which was thrust a ''Colts 44" with an 



SOJOURN WITH "QUEEN ANNE" 45 

eight-inch barrel. It seems that this belt 
and hardware were worn as constantly as 
the pompadour; nor were the guns orna- 
mental merely. For the train crew gave us 
vivid accounts of happenings before Queen 
Anne's peculiarities were so well under- 
stood; how that the hicks traveling to and^ 
from the camps attempted to vary the mo-' 
notony of the trip by loud salutations and 
shady badinage, the same being promptly 
responded to by a volley from one and 
sometimes from both guns, resulting in a 
disappearing act by hicks and train crew 
behind the log cars. Agility of the tor- 
mentors and bad marksmanship had so far 
prevented fatalities. And the manners of 
all passers-by had improved to the point of 
absolute silence in that neck o' woods. 

For historical exactness I must mention 
the existence of the Queen's consort, a list- 
less, cadaverous undersized manakin known 
by the hicks as ^'Mr. Queen Anne." There 
could be no doubt of Queen Anne's in- 
sanity, and I think her consort was also de- 
ranged, if he had sufficient mental machin- 
ery to make derangement possible. They 
were miserably poor, with no visible means 
of support, although I learned that the 



46 TALES OF TIOGA 

consort had sometime been a "section 
hand'* on the railroad. 

We were made welcome after Louie had 
satisfied Queen Anne that he was not the 
person of the same name who had formerly 
been employed in the woods above — all such 
persons being contraband of war andl the 
'season open the year round with her for 
all timber jacks, real or imaginary. The 
sandwiches, blankets and lantern were 
temporarily left in the shanty for safe 
keeping. The day still being young the 
Guv and Louie fished the Lafferty above 
Queen Anne's and Henry and I made for 
the mouth of the Manifore and fished! to- 
gether up Slate Run in perfectly clear 
water, under a broiling sun for half a mile 
or more with indifferent success. At this 
point Morris Run puts in, and Henry de- 
cided to try this stream while I continued 
up the main stream. The agreement at 
parting was that at the end of two hours 
both were to turn back, reaching the 
mouth of Morris Run as nearly at the same 
time as the exigencies of the sport and 
our separate voyages would permit. In 
case we should not sight each other on ar- 
rival, the one arriving first was to leave 
the usual stone monument at a point 



SOJOURN WITH "QUEEN ANNE" 47 

agreed upon and continue slowly down 
stream to the mouth of the Manifore, 
where a dead stop was to be made, if neces- 
sary, until overtaken by the other. 

After parting, the fishing improved as 
might have been expected as the day de- 
clined and the shadows lengthened and the 
heat abated. At the end of two hours and 
just as I was about to turn back, I sighted 
a fisherman coming down stream who 
proved to be a neighbor from the center of 
the world, Wellsboro. He had started from 
Leetonia village on Cedar Run that morn- 
ing; had crossed the water-shed between 
Cedar Run and Slate Run, striking the 
head waters of the "Frying Pan," followed 
this stream down to "The Cushman" ; had 
fished down the Cushman to its confluence 
with "The Francis," the two streams form- 
ing Slate Run; thence down Slate Run 
some four or five miles to the point of our 
meeting. When we separated he turned 
right-about, intending to retrace his steps. 
I will not venture to guess at the distance 
covered, but the feat was a good indication 
that my neighbor's wind, muscle and en- 
thusiasm were in good order. I must not 
omit to mention here an episode which had 
an important bearing on subsequent 



48 TALES OF TIOGA 

events. As an amenity due from one fish- 
erman to another under such eminently 
fitting circumstances, I produced what the 
Guv had some years previously and upon 
first sight declared to be "a capsule, such 
as you get at a drug store," that same 
containing about one (woman's) boot heel 
of **nose paint." As I turned down stream 
the sun was about setting, and I realized 
that the fishing time for the day, at that 
season, had just begun. 

The sport was splendid, and but for a sub- 
conscious feeling that my dallying might 
lead to a catastrophe, I was oblivious of 
everything but him "who with prodigious 
flounces rose to the surface after flies." 
I reached the mouth of Morris Run repre- 
hensibly late, although still broad daylight. 
But my twinges of conscience were suc- 
ceeded by feelings of surprise when I failed 
to find any signal denoting that Henry 
was ahead. I thereupon built one myself, 
grumbling meanwhile at Henry's reckless 
depravity of conduct, and moved leisurely 
down stream, confident that he would soon 
overtake me. Some places on the stream 
are rather hazardous to navigate alone, 
but I arrived at the mouth of the Mani- 
f ore without mishap. I hoped at this point 



SOJOURN WITH ''QUEEN ANNE" 49 

to encounter the Guv and Louie, or at 
least to get a message that they had passed 
this point on their way to the Five Mile 
Dam. But neither were signs visible nor 
sounds audible. There is no valley at this 
point, but merely a narrow canon cut by 
the two streams through rock cliffs, the 
wall on the opposite side from the mouth 
of the Manif ore being very high and sheer. 
Along the foot of the cliff, both above and 
below the mouth of the Manif ore, is a long 
reach of deep water with glassy surface, 
and over the whole the trout were breaking 
in countless numbers. I was kept busy. 
As long as I could see the surface I took no 
thought of the morrow, but at last, and as 
if by magic, I realized that it was pitch 
dark. I sat down on the narrow strand to 
take account of — the absence of stock. I 
had eaten nothing since leaving Slate Run 
village. I had smoked a pipe in defense 
against punkeys, contrary to habit, until 
my tongue was too sore to smoke more; 
I had no grub or nose paint, and investiga- 
tion discovered but one match. I was 
filled with envious disgust at the thought 
of Louie and the Guv at the dam with the 
sandwiches, the lantern and the blankets, 
from all of which I was separated by two 



50 TALES OF TIOGA 

miles of an unknown and dangerous 
stream enveloped in charcoal blackness. I 
was by this time pretty well fagged, and 
probably would have remained where I was 
until morning but for the really harrowing 
thought that Henry must be up Morris 
Run with a broken leg or "setch like." The 
latter thought filled me with a desperate 
resolution to do something, but what? I 
remembered that just above the mouth of 
the Manifore near the point where Henry 
and I struck the stream in the morning, 
we had noticed a neat little cave about 
four feet high, five feet wide and ten feet 
deep, running parallel with the stream, not 
more than ten feet from the water's edge 
and facing Slate Run, which was not more 
than fifty yards from the mouth of the 
cave. Hanging from a protruding rock in 
the roof of the cave was a barn-lantern, 
apparently in good order. I proceeded 
slowly by following the bed of the stream 
and judging the distance by memory, to 
the mouth of the cave, felt about until I 
found the lantern, opened it without diffi- 
culty and proceeded to strike my only re- 
maining match. The match responded 
bravely in the shelter of the cave, but the 
lantern wick would not ignite, and I dis- 



SOJOURN WITH "QUEEN ANNE" 51 

covered that, although the lantern was in- 
tact, it was destitute of oil. 

One of the characteristics of the Slate 
Run Valley is an overabundance of rattle- 
snakes. And I recalled, as my match went 
out, the Queen's graphic account, given us 
during our audience, of having shot three 
under or near the palace, and of the con- 
sort having killed two on the railroad near 
by, all within a fortnight last past. I beat 
a hasty retreat from the cave and plunked 
into the middle of the Manif ore by way of 
defense, filling both rubber hip boots at 
the first dip. I remembered that not far 
above was a log thrown across the chasm 
of the stream which was used by the "tim- 
ber jacks'' when negotiating their way on 
foot to and fro between the camps above 
and Slate Run village. By this means a 
couple of miles or more were cut off from 
the route of the railroad. I crawled cau- 
tiously upstream until my waving arms 
came in ^contact with the crossing-log, 
which was flat on the upper side, drew my- 
self up and lay on my back with one leg 
at a time pointing skyward until the water 
was well drained from my boots. For the 
uninitiated it is here stated that wet rub- 
ber boots pulled off are useless until dry. 



52 TALES OF TIOGA 

While sitting on the log, I "took down" my 
rod, and knowing that the railroad was 
somewhere up the mountain I dove into 
the bush. I was as cold as a wedge when 
I started, but by the time I had reached 
the railroad I was boiling hot. The cause, 
I think, was not so much from exertion 
(although that was considerable) as from 
apprehension as to what I might be tread- 
ing on. When I reached the railroad my 
difficulties had just begun. The track, 
cheaply built, spanned numerous ravines 
with heavy timbers thrown across; ties 
laid helter-skelter on the timbers, and the 
rails on the ties. The ties were separated 
by distances varying from two to four feet, 
so that it was necessary in the darkness to 
locate each tie before taking the next step. 
I headed toward Queen Anne's, for surely 
the palace must contain a lantern, and 
Henry must be located. After slow and 
watchful progress, a glimmer of light an- 
nounced my approach to the palace, and 
my amazement may be imagined at the 
sight which presently met my eyes. An 
outside door was standing open, and by the 
light of a small lamp I saw a small square 
table covered with a brown oilcloth, and 
seated on the four sides were Queen Anne, 



SOJOURN WITH "QUEEN ANNE" 53 

Mr. Queen Anne, the Guv and Louie. A 
few cracked pieces of crockery and steel 
knives and forks were scattered about the 
table, and through the door was emanating 
a very penetrating and nauseating stench. 
I was cordially made welcome and invited 
to be seated at table. And I accepted the 
invitation with mixed emotions. I soon 
became partially accustomed to the odor 
and began seeking for the cause. The 
viands consisted of what appeared to be 
shredded codfish and fried trout (the 
latter furnished by my comrades). 
These dishes were supplemented with 
green tea. I tried both cod and trout, 
but found it impossible to eat either 
because of the substance in which they 
had been cooked. I was informed by 
Queen Anne that the tea, the cod and 
the butter (?) (in which the cod and 
trout were fried) had all come from 
Sears & Roebuck, Chicago. And I am cer- 
tain, as are the others, that the shipping 
clerk had either by accident or design sub- 
stituted axle grease for butter. The Guv 
and Louie had been obliged to eat some- 
what of each dish while being "dictated" 
at by Queen Anne, gently but firmly with 
a Colts 44. I successfully pleaded indis- 



54 TALES OF TIOGA 

position and loss of appetite, drank numer- 
ous cups of tea, and mildly asked for one 
of our own sandwiches. I was enthusias- 
tically informed by Queen Anne that she 
and the consort had eaten them all for 
their mid-day meal and that they were 
found to be very good. My hunger having 
vanished (under the combined influence 
of the soothing distention caused by quan- 
tities of tea, dread of my surroundings, and 
the odor of fried axle grease) , the haunting 
thought of Henry returned, and I com- 
municated my distress to the Guv and 
Louie. I had learned meantime that hav- 
ing found the fishing good and the going 
bad, they had confined their efforts to the 
Laflferty and to the Manifore below Queen 
Anne's. 

A meeting of the Board of Strategy was 
hastily convened and it was resolved by 
Louie that Henry was not on Morris Run 
with a broken leg, but that he was at the 
Five Mile Dam(n) him. I announced my 
intention of settling his whereabouts, pro- 
ceeded to light our lantern, and was about 
to start when poor old Louie began to reach 
for his wet wading shoes under the cook 
stove. This was too much for the Guv 
who followed suit, and I shall always re- 



SOJOURN WITH "QUEEN ANNE" 55 

member with pleasure the ready sympathy 
with my alarm of these two old vets, jaded 
and weary as they were and nauseated by 
forced drafts of Queen Anne's fried axle 
grease. 

We took to the railroad, and had not 
gone more than a quarter of a mile when, 
to our genuine relief and joy, we met 
Henry, with piano-legs intact, cautiously 
feeling his way along the ties as I had just 
been doing. He was probably not more 
than a quarter of a mile behind me when 
I struck the track above the mouth of the 
Manifore. Henry accounted for himself 
thus: He had tarried longer in Morris 
Run than he had intended, and finally hur- 
ried down at top speed to the mouth, 
glanced up and down the main stream for 
me, and concluded that I must be below 
him. He Kad been worried for fear our 
plans would miscarry ; had forgotten in his 
haste and anxiety about the signal, and 
so rushed down stream until he reached 
the mouth of the Manifore. Here, instead 
of finding friends or news, all was silent, 
and he therefore concluded that we three 
had met and were preceding him — we, as 
he thought, being under the impression 
that he was preceding ^us. He accordingly 



56 TALES OF TIOGA 

navigated down stream to the dam and 
found it deserted, except by the trout, 
which were as numerous and sizable as he 
and Louie had described them to be. But 
he was haunted by misgivings, annoyed by 
doubts, an empty stomach, absence of a 
lantern, blanket, etc. And finally broke 
for the trail to the railroad while he could 
still avail himself of ''the last steps of 
day.'' He has ever since plumed himself 
upon the fact that he was the only man in 
the party that did reach the dam, although 
his stay was short. 

Without delay the Board of Strategy 
was again convened, and it was decided to 
seek the shelter of Queen Anne's hospi- 
table roof for the night. 

The palace consisted of three very small 
rooms, the one already mentioned, with 
cook stove and table, at one end of the 
building ; a so-called bedroom in the middle, 
and ''the parlor" at the other end. We 
were graciously assigned to the parlor, and 
with the help of our blankets could have 
made out very well on the floor. But this 
we were not permitted to do. The Queen 
took a hand; ordered the four wooden 
chairs brought from the kitchen, placed 
them two and two together backs outward. 



SOJOURN WITH "QUEEN ANNE" 57 

caused two boards to be laid thereon, then 
one of our blankets over the boards, and 
ordered Louie and Henry to repose thereon. 
As for the Guv and me, we fared less com- 
fortably though more pretentiously. The 
chief ornament of the parlor was an old 
sofa with a rolling head and high back. 
The two parlor chairs were placed with 
backs against the wall, the front of the 
sofa placed against these chairs and the 
whole covered with our other blanket. The 
Guv was assigned to that part of this con- 
trivance nearest the back of the sofa, 
which stood out in the room, while I was 
expected to repose somewhere near the 
juncture of the chairs and sofa. Every- 
body appeared delighted while the Queen 
was directing details, for such was our 
dread of giving offense, with the probable 
fatal consequences, that I think that even 
that redoubtable old warrior, Louie, would 
have attempted to stand on his head in the 
corner all night if Queen Anne had made 
a point of it. 

In the d:ead hour when "night's swift 
dragons cut the clouds full fast * * * and 
ghosts wandering here and there troop 
home to church yards," Sears & Roebuck's 
axle grease began to take effect and the Guv 



58 TALES OF TIOGA 

had a longing to leave the house. I cannot 
say that I was disturbed by his move- 
ments ; nothing I think could: be said to be 
disturbing to a person in my situation, but 
I was aware of his movements. The little 
lamp which did service in the kitchen had 
been brought to the parlor as a special 
mark of favor by Queen Anne's own hand. 
This the Guv lighted, and with it departed. 
With his feet thrust hastily into his big 
canvas unlaced wading shoes, a blue flan- 
nel shirt with skirt much too short to sug- 
gest either pajamas or "nightie," and with 
a red bandanna rakishly knotted at the 
throat, the whole presented a spectacle cer- 
tainly picturesque. His absence was brief 
and his return was unannounced except by 
labored breathing, indicating great exer- 
tion or a high degree of excitement. What 
had become of the lamp ? The whole party 
were roused by vigorous shakes, and the 
Guv announced in subdued but startling 
tones that he had lost the lamp chimney, 
and that search must be instantly or- 
ganized, as recovery of the same was the 
only alternative to a midnight flight for 
Slate Run village and: the great world. 
Louie was what Michael Angelo would 
have recognized as an "emergency man" 



SOJOURN WITH "QUEEN ANNE" 59 

and' located our lantern by the light of a 
single match. 

The posse was soon organized, the uni- 
form consisting of wading shoes and flan- 
nel shirts, varied in my case by rubber hip 
boots, which I managed to crowd my bare 
legs into, though the boots were still wet, 
and varied as to the Guv by one bare foot, 
one shoe having been lost in the lamp chim- 
ney catastrophe. 

The ground around the palace was 
strewn with a profusion of sand-stone 
boulders, emphasized by the diggings and 
blastings necessary to preserve the rail- 
road grade on one side of the palace. 
Nearly the whole surface of the ground 
and many of the boulders were covered 
with a thick matting of the fire vine, and 
so thick was the growth that it often con- 
cealed completely not only great rocks but 
also small pits or gulleys. 

We learned that the Guv during his soli- 
tary voyage unsuspectingly thrust his foot 
into one of these pitfalls, toppled over ex- 
tinguishing the light, losing the chimney 
and his shoe. For the moment he struck 
bottom, he ^'resolved on action fierce and 
bold, although it made his blood run cold," 
and yanked his foot up, leaving the shoe 



60 TALES OF TIOGA 

behind. For the mass of vines concealing 
the hole had separated him from that not 
inconsiderable piece of ponderable matter 
above mentioned. When the posse filed out 
for the rescue it was Indian fashion, the 
Guv leading with the lantern and moving 
gingerly with one bare foot. The chimney 
was soon found cushioned on a bed of 
vines — flawless, and the shoe was recov- 
ered in due season. 

Next morning we regaled ourselves with 
more tea, and with trout roasted or friz- 
zled without admixture of axle grease. 
And the Board of Strategy was again con- 
vened. The Guv and I were for legging 
it to the village immediately, but those 
battle-scarred veterans, our guides and 
mentors, outvoted us ; Henry on the ground 
of fond recollections of the Laff erty which 
he had not been able to try the day before, 
and Louis on the ground that before the 
timber was removed the upper reaches of 
the Manifore had been a paradise for fish- 
ermen, and that at worst a part of these 
old charms must still remain. The pairing 
of the day before was reversed, and Henry 
and the Guv wended their way up the Laf- 
ferty and Louie and I up the Manifore. 

As has been stated, the timber in the 



SOJOURN WITH "QUEEN ANNE" 61 

lower Slate Run valley had been cut clean, 
and for miles around hardly a tree re- 
mained. Some years before the railroad, 
instead of doubling on itself at Queen 
Anne's, had continued up the Manifore for 
several miles. But after the timber was 
exhausted the rails had been taken up and 
the region deserted. The old roadbed made 
walking easy, but we had not gone a quarter 
of a mile when we were met by a cat, com- 
mon domestic variety, half or two-thirds 
grown, coming down the road and crying 
pitifully. Any distress signal was unbear- 
able to Louie, even though coming from a 
common cat, and after picking it up and 
stroking it and addressing it with soothing 
words and endearing names, he dropped it 
gently over the edge of the embankment 
into the soft vegetation at the bottom, and 
then increased his pace for the purpose of 
losing the cat. The scheme was a failure, 
and presently it was at our heels again 
with most doleful yowling. The bank was 
here higher and I tried the same plan with 
like result. The morning was broiling hot, 
and the cat's yowling certainly raised our 
temperature. Anything else was better 
than this as we could not even talk with- 
out effort. We next tried carrying the 



62 TALES OF TIOGA 

animal to quiet it, but it would not be held 
and squirmed out of our arms. This dis- 
tressing situation continued for a mile or 
more, and until we broke down over the 
edge of the dug-road toward the stream 
and plunged into briars and brambles im- 
penetrable to house cats. For the whole 
bottom of the narrow valley was filled with 
decaying tree-tops and all the debris of the 
logging operations from the high hills on 
either side. It was with great difficulty 
that we even reached the stream, and after 
following the bed for, say, two hundred 
yards, we despaired of being able to fish 
with comfort, and were slowly threading 
our way through brush and tree-tops when 
a black bear, that at first glimpse appeared 
to me to be about the size of a team-load 
of baled hay, got up in the bed of the creek 
not more than three rods below us, scram- 
bled up the bank and made a path through 
the brush with as much apparent ease as a 
sprinter on a race track. We decided then 
and there to retrace our steps to the sort 
of trail we had come down from the old 
roadbed, and finally we were approaching 
this true grade down hill, when to our 
horror our ears were greeted by the yowls 
of our late tormentor, and the following 



SOJOURN WITH "QUEEN ANNE" 63 

conversation ensued: Louie — "Bob, this 
cat is dying of hunger ; we have nothing to 
give the poor little beast, and the humane 
thing to do is to take it by the hind legs 
and beat its brains out on a rock." Bob — 
"Louie, you are exactly right, that will be 
the humane thing to do — put the poor little 
creature out of its misery." Louie — "I 
wish I had a gun, it would then be over 
with in a moment." Bob — "I've got a 
good revolver in my pocket; take that." 
Louie — "That's just the thing!" Louie 
takes the revolver in one hand and coaxes 
the cat into the other hand. "Now, Bob, 
I think you had better shoot this cat. You 
see, I never could shoot a revolver ; as long 
ago as when I was in the army I was no 
good with a revolver, and besides, there 
are only four cartridges in this gun, and as 
a cat has nine lives, when the gun has been 
emptied, if I take one life with each shot 
the job won't be half done." The revolver 
was returned and we took turns trying to 
carry the cat on the return trip. I shall 
never forget the discomfort of that return 
trip, resulting from the combination of 
heat, fatigue and caterwaulings. 

As we reached the angle of the railroad 
above Queen Anne's we found a gang of 



64 TALES OF TIOGA 

track workers just putting their grub pails 
away after the noon meal. I hailed them 
generally with an offer of a quarter of a 
dollar to any one who would feed the cat. 
The foreman came forward and said there 
was a slice of bread in his pail, probably 
pretty well dried out by this time as his 
pail had been setting in the sun all day. 
Meantime Louie had stopped at the spring 
near by and began dressing the small catch 
of the morning, and fussing with the catch 
of the day before. I found the slice of 
bread, big, thick and homemade, and I 
tried the cat with a small morsel of the 
softest part. But the offer was refused, 
and I proceeded to cut it in half with great 
exactness, and sat down in the blazing sun 
to devour my half. While thus engaged I 
heard a vociferous outbreak from Louie, to 

the effect that he was the biggest d d 

fool that ever trod shoe leather; that he 
must be getting softening of the brain, and 
various similar and voluble expletives, all 
directed against himself. When I objected 
to the application of such language to the 
character of a friend in my presence, he 
explained that what ailed the cat and had 
ailed it from our first encounter, was that 
it wanted fish, fish! The cat was there- 



SOJOURN WITH "QUEEN ANNE" 65 

after fed piece-meal about half a trout at 
a time, the feeding being separated by 
some minutes to avoid shock or collapse 
or whatever it is that happens to animals 
which eat too fast after fasting too long. 
When the beast was finally satisfied I car- 
ried it to Queen Anne and explained that 
a stray cat taken in and harbored is a sure 
mascot against ill fortune for a period of 
one full year from the very day of the cat's 
arrival. This alluring and innocent fable 
appealed strongly to Queen Anne and the 
cat episode closed with general satisfac- 
tion. 

The log train was supposed to pass 
Queen Anne's about four in the afternoon, 
but the uncertainty of the schedule and 
the immense importance of connecting 
with the train brought Henry and the Guv 
to the fore soon after our arrival. Henry 
was very curious about the condition of 
the upper Manifore and accosted me for 
news with his first greeting. I referred 
him to Louie, who was well known for his 
efficiency in picturesque profanity, and I 
felt strongly how inadequate were my de- 
scriptive powers to do justice to the sub- 
ject. Louie promptly and cheerfully re- 
sponded to Henry's requei^t, placed his 
5 



66 TALES OF TIOGA 

back against a corner of the house, and 
directed all his powers, mental and phy- 
sical, to a description of the stream as we 
found it. I remember the general tone of 
the description with great vividness, but 
I cannot reproduce it — language fails me. 
Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, the home of 
philosophers, once numbered among many 
others, the late Jimmie Hart, who used to 
say that "swearing is of two kinds, swear- 
ing from the head and swearing from the 
heart." Louie's was always swearing from 
the head. 

We were all greatly fagged from lack of 
food, lack of sleep and the heat. The Guv 
stole away and presently I found him ly- 
ing on his back on the floor in the "parlor" 
sound asleep. I joined him and dropped to 
sleep thinking that the others would have 
a sufficient sense of responsibility not to 
do likewise. I was startled from my 
slumber by the screech of the stem-winder 
not a hundred feet away, and came to a 
sitting posture before I was fairly awake. 
Looking to the right and left I found my 
comrades sitting in like postures and all 
dazed by the imminence of disaster. The 
Guv's executive instinct asserted itself and 
he issued orders that some one throw a tie 



SOJOURN WITH "QUEEN ANNE" 67 

across the rails and stop the train at all 
hazards. Henry and Louie promptly car- 
ried out the order literally, while we 
brought our creels from the spring and 
gathered the remainder of our traps. The 
return trip to "Heartsease" was unevent- 
ful, but I shall never forget the sense of 
quiet comfort which our rude log cabin 
impressed me with upon entering. I was 
oblivious of the wide cracks between the 
logs, the entire absence of so-called modern 
conveniences. The bunks looked wonder- 
fully inviting, the grub seemed bountiful 
and of the daintiest quality. And here was 
serenity and peace devoid of Colt's 44's 
with eight-inch barrels, and crazy people — 
only congenial friends tried by the exact- 
ing intimacies of life in a log cabin, and 
days and nights spent together on trout 
streams. Those were the golden days and 
those the friends without price, and the 
memory of those days and the love of those 
friends "time cannot wither, nor custom 
stale." 



LINCOLN— A PHASE 

Part of an address delivered before the 
faculty and student body of lincoln 
University, Pennsylvania, Febru- 
ary 12th, 1914 

From Runny mede, in the 12th Century, 
to Appomattox, in the 19th Century, is cer- 
tainly a far cry, but to the poKtical geneal- 
ogist the descent is certain and the rela- 
tion complete. From Magna Charta to the 
Emancipation Proclamation the connecting 
mountain range is almost all visible to the 
eye of the historian. Some of the peaks 
are just less imposing than the highest — 
imperishable names like John Hampden, 
John Endicott, John Winthrop and John 
Brown — ^but even this class may not be 
mentioned upon this occasion — only the 
tallest. 

The greatest social and political cata- 
clysm on English soil in the struggle for 
liberty by the Anglo-Saxon race resulted 
in Cromwell and his Commonwealth. The 
Commonwealth apparently had no ances- 
tors and no descendants, and while Crom- 
well was being execrated and anathema- 
tized by the Kings throughout the world 
as the greatest felon and most abhorrent 

68 



LINCOLN— A PHASE 69 

wretch in the annals of crime, the philos- 
ophers and statesmen were wondering if 
the upheaval known as the Commonwealth 
really had any significance, and if so, what 
it was — with a King coming just before 
and a King coming just after. 

The next chapter in this abridged ac- 
count of the upward struggle for freedom 
brings us to the revolt of the American 
Colonies against the tyranny of Great 
Britain. The greatest personal asset of 
that struggle was Washington, and be- 
tween Washington and Lincoln the relation 
is instantly apparent. To the thoughtful 
mind it must be accepted as an historical 
truism that the path leading from Magna 
Charta to Lincoln goes straight through 
the heart of Cromwell and Washington, 
and in the light of our twentieth century 
ideas of civil and political liberty the 
enigma of the English Commonwealth is 
made plain. As only the convulsions of 
nature produce towering peaks, so is it 
with civilization, and Lincoln was the 
product of such a convulsion. 

It is opportunity that distinguishes the 
great from the mediocre, and Lincoln 
might have passed his life amid ordinary 
scenes and the world would not have 



70 TALES OF TIOGA 

known what he was or what he might do. 
It was the flash of lightning in the night of 
the Nation's dread that revealed what the 
daylight of a happier period might never 
have discovered to the eyes of his country- 
men. Our vision is no doubt still some- 
what beclouded by the upheaval and the 
din of the War of the Rebellion. "Great 
captains with their guns and drums disturb 
our judgment for the hour, but at last 
silence comes." But the silence which is 
essential to the writing of definitive his- 
tory will not come until the last of the 
generation engaged in that mighty conflict 
shall have passed away; until the embers 
of the seething passions roused by that 
titanic struggle shall have died. When the 
spirit of malign sectionalism shall have 
given place to a serene and generous desire 
by all our people north and south to scotch 
error and to discover truth only, then will 
mankind be able to assign to Lincoln his 
final page in the history of humanity. 
Even now, however, we are able to see 
some things in their great outlines truly. 
We see that before the close of the war 
Lincoln became a great general; that be- 
fore the close of the war he became a great 
statesman ; that before the war began, and 



LINCOLN— A PHASE 71 

as a gift of nature, he was a great diplo- 
matist and negotiator; that he was both 
poet and sage, and when we add to this 
panoply the high and difficult art of perfect 
English composition, we marvel at his 
armament for usefulness to his country. 
But even with this catalogue of powerful 
attributes before us, we should miss his 
most striking traits of character if we 
omitted to mention the certainty of his 
logic and the greatness and sanity of his 
vision. 

Let us see what was the elementary 
training for the life work which lay before 
this man whom we meet to commemorate. 
We are all familiar with the stories of his 
early struggles; of the rail splitting and 
the corn hoeing, to be followed at night by 
the best books obtainable to be read by the 
flickering light of the pine knot. Meas- 
ured by the standard of the college don, by 
the restricted standard of the school and 
of the university, he would probably be 
said to have had no education whatever. 

But let us inquire what these books read 
at such disadvantage were. We are cer- 
tain of the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, of 
Aesop's Fables, and of Shakespeare, And 
let us see what kind of equipment these 



72 TALES OF TIOGA 

books well read and well re-read with all 
Lincoln's tenacity of memory and capacity 
of understanding really afforded. The 
Romans had an adage, "Beware of the man 
with one book," meaning, no doubt, that a 
man who knows one book well is a more 
dangerous antagonist than one who knows 
many books superficially. Let us consider 
then "the food that this our Caesar feeds 
on that he is grown so great." He found 
that model of the sententious expression 
in Moses' account of the creation in the 
book of Genesis; he found the sonorous 
eloquence of the book of Isaiah ; he had the 
acme of the religious exaltation of style in 
the most perfect of all allegories, the Pil- 
grim's Progress, and he had one of the best 
specimens of the Greek Classics in Aesop's 
Fables. 

In this galaxy of jewels we still have 
Shakespeare to mention. Goethe has said, 
"that the final cause and consummation of 
all natural and human activity is dramatic 
poetry." 

The critics have with unanimity placed 
Shakespeare in a pre-eminent place in this 
realm of dramatic poetry; they have done 
more — they have assigned to him the same 
exalted station among lyric poets. 



LINCOLN— A PHASE 73 

We may then safely conclude that start- 
ing with Lincoln's perfect equipoise of soul, 
his ability to assimilate and to discriminate 
with superior intelligence, the books which 
supplied his elementary education afforded 
a singularly perfect one for the work in 
hand. 

His writings and speeches are a part of 
the priceless heritage which he has left 
us, and his style was admirably adapted as 
a vehicle for the message. 

Probably the best known, most fre- 
quently quoted and most celebrated of all 
his writings or speeches is the Gettysburg 
speech — and justly so. But when the ac- 
cepted rules of English construction are 
applied, when the rules of grammatical 
analysis are invoked, the result is startling 
to our prejudiced susceptibilities. Such an 
analysis is not intended here, but let it 
suffice to say that this speech, which Stan- 
ton said — and who will dispute the asser- 
tion — "will live as long as the English 
language is spoken," is far less perfect as 
a literary production than much else writ- 
ten by Lincoln. Let me illustrate my 
meaning : 

It will appear upon examination that in 
sixteen consecutive lines of this speech the 



74 TALES OF TIOGA 

adverb *'here" is repeated no less than 
eight times, which is manifestly contrary 
to the rules which govern the literary 
craftsman. What significance is to be at- 
tached to this fact? Does it mean that 
there is, in truth, no correlation between 
style and substance; that literature and 
the literary art are something apart from 
the expression of great thoughts and ideas, 
and are understood and practiced by 
scholars and bookmen only? We think 
not, and we offer this explanation: 

The speech at Gettysburg was the ex- 
pression of a great soul imbued with a 
great passion for a great and unselfish 
cause, and we recognize and are moved 
by the simple and irresistible eloquence of 
the utterances all unconscious of and in 
spite of any slight defects of the garment 
in which the message is clothed. It is as 
if a brilliant orb of light should be seen 
through a scratched glass; the glorious 
effulgence of the light would make us un- 
aware of the defects of the glass ; it is the 
bursting forth of a mighty spirit in a 
solemn requiem to the dead and a solemn 
summons to arms of the living. 

An approximation to perfect speaking 
and writing is the result of study and prac- 



LINCOLN— A PHASE 75 

tice combined with industry along that 
line. To believe otherwise is to discredit 
art. I venture to assert that although the 
Gettysburg speech was written under ad- 
verse circumstances and in haste, as finally 
given for publication, it had received as 
careful revising and correcting as any of 
Lincoln's writings other than his formal 
State papers. This speech was made in 
November, 1863, and exactly one year 
later, in November, 1864, we have a prod- 
uct of his pen, which, though not so well 
known, is none the less admirable. It was 
evidently written without premeditation — 
on the impulse of the moment and without 
revision. It was addressed to a person un- 
known to liim except by surname — no 
Christian name being given. I propose to 
read the letter as a conclusion to these re- 
marks, but before doing so I wish to call 
attention to an interesting, a most note- 
worthy fact. In the main corridor of one 
of the most ancient colleges at Oxford 
University, Brasenose, hangs a copy of this 
letter substantially framed. It hangs there 
for all the college world to see, by au- 
thority of the faculty of this venerable seat 
of learning, as a specimen of perfect Eng- 
lish. A generous and noble tribute, indeed, 



76 TALES OF TIOGA 

to this self-educated man of the primitive 
Western World, and a no less noble mani- 
festation of wisdom and magnanimity on 
the part of the faculty of the College. The 
letter consists of but four sentences — 
note how perfectly the first puts the reader 
in possession of all that need be known to 
understand what follows: 

"Executive, Mansion, 
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864. 

"To Mrs. Bixby, 
"Boston, Mass. 

"Dear Madam: 

"I have been shown in the files of the 
War Department a statement of the Ad- 
jutant General of Massachusetts that you 
are the mother of five sons who have died 
gloriously on the field of battle. I feel 
how weak and fruitless must be any word 
of mine which should attempt to beguile 
you from the grief of a loss so overwhelm- 
ing. But I cannot refrain from tendering 
you the consolation that may be found in 
the thanks of the Republic they died to 
save. I pray that our Heavenly Father 
may assuage the anguish of your bereave- 
ment, and leave you only the cherished 



LINCOLN— A PHASE 77 

memory of the loved and lost, and the 
solemn pride that must be yours to have 
laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of 
freedom. 

''Yours very sincerely and respectfully, 

"A. LINCOLN." 

If the nations of the earth were asked to 
contribute to the temple of immortal fame 
all their best and greatest products for the 
nineteenth century and our country should 
offer the name of Abraham Lincoln alone, 
her quota would be more than filled. "His 
life was gentle, and the elements so mixed 
in him that Nature might stand up and 
say to all the world, This was a man.' " 



THOMAS HARGADON, ALIAS 
THOMAS HARDEN 

Thomas Harden was born at Leslea, 
Dromahaire, County Lei trim, Ireland, in 
1827, and died at Wellsboro, Tioga County, 
Pennsylvania, October 15, 1898. He was 
educated in Ireland for the profession of 
civil engineer, but before his education was 
completed the spirit of adventure seized 
him, and at the age of twenty-one years 
he clandestinely came to America, reach- 
ing, what seemed to him, the unknown 
Western World April 9, 1848. Many per- 
plexing and discouraging adventures tried 
his courage before he finally settled in 
Wellsboro in 1858, where he spent the re- 
mainder of his long and busy life. 

He was descended from Patrick Har- 
gadon, his father, and Bridget Keegan 
Hargadon, his mother. They were each 
married once only. Patrick Hargadon died 
January 29, 1869, and Bridget Keegan 
Hargadon died March 10, 1870. Both were 
natives of County Leitrim, where they 
lived and died. 

The issue of this marriage was five sons 
and three daughters, of whom three sons, 

78 



THOMAS HARGADON 79 

namely: Patrick, Thomas and Peter; and 
two daughters, namely: Mary and Cather- 
ine, came to America. The others, namely : 
John, Owen and Bridget remained at home 
in the place of their nativity. 

After settling in Wellsboro he married 
Miss McGovern, of Lancaster, Pennsyl- 
vania, a sister of Thomas McGovern, for 
many years a bishop of the Catholic 
Church, presiding over the central diocese 
of Pennsylvania, and residing in Harris- 
burg, and John McGovern, a leading busi- 
ness man of the city of Lancaster, both 
now deceased. 

The offspring of their marriage was one 
child, a daughter, Margaret, a very charm- 
ing and highly educated young woman, 
who died at the untimely age of twenty- 
one years, in the year 1884. The mother 
died soon after, and the remaining four- 
teen years of Mr. Harden's life were beset 
with business disaster and blasted domes- 
tic hopes, but toward his friends he re- 
mained cheerful and companionable to the 
last, and his rich and incomparable flow of 
wit remained undiminished. 

At the zenith of his business career the 
volume and number of his transactions were 
very large and easily made him the leading 



80 TALES OF TIOGA 

merchant of the town and probably of the 
county. 

Mr. Harden had a fine mind which had 
been cultivated by years of constant famil- 
iarity with English classic literature, and 
he was especially fond of poetry, and more 
especially of the Lake School of poets, and 
of Pope. When in congenial surroundings 
he was prone to quote from these poets, 
which he was able to do extensively, cor- 
rectly and with fine expression and evident 
appreciation and pleasure. 

He was a very companionable man and, 
although not prepossessing in countenance, 
his sprightliness and affability were engag- 
ing and his pride of personal appearance, 
as displayed by his neatness of attire, even 
when old, forlorn, and somewhat broken 
physically and financially, was always 
noticeable. 

Mr. Harden was active and instrumental 
in establishing St. Peter's Roman Catholic 
Church, of Wellsboro, and was constant in 
his religious duties to the end. 

As to his wit, I think it may be asserted 
without fear of contradiction by those who 
were his contemporaries, that there is no 
knowledge or tradition in the community 
of any man or woman who possessed such 



THOMAS HARGADON 81 

an inexhaustible fund of original, unique 
and timely wit. 

The memory of a man of the prominence 
of Thomas Harden in our communal life, 
during a period of forty years, ought to be 
preserved somewhere, and this sketch, 
though meagre, contains all the biographi- 
cal data obtainable. For although he was 
the eldest but one of eight children, none 
of his generation are now living, and even 
of the next generation, I am informed, 
that none are surviving except Mrs. Agnes 
Murray, of Elmira, New York, daughter of 
Mary Hargadon intermarried with James 
Rourke ; John P. Harden, of Rexville ; Mrs. 
Felix Chlossey, of Rochester; Isabelle 
Harden, of Rexville, all of the State of 
New York, and Frances Harden, of Toledo, 
Ohio, children of the late Patrick Harden. 

It will be interesting to those who knew 
him and who happen to see this sketch to 
learn that his family name was Hargadon 
and not Harden, he having made the 
change as a matter of convenience after 
coming to this country, because of the 
difficulty he found in getting his real name 
properly pronounced by native Americans. 
This fact was never known in our com- 
munity until after his death, when it was 

6 



82 TALES OF TIOGA 

discovered that his kin residing in Ireland 
(all of whom are now deceased) inherited 
a pro rata share of his estate as collateral 
heirs under the family name of "Harga- 
don." 

He was not apt to make '"bulls," but 
when he did they were as fine as might 
have been expected. Here is a single 
specimen. When financial disaster over- 
took him he made an assignment for the 
benefit of creditors, and John McGovern, 
of Lancaster, was named an assignee. 
Some real estate was saved from the 
wreck, the income from which furnished 
a competency for Mr. Harden in his latter 
years. 

Upon a certain occasion he wanted to 
identify Mr. McGovern to a certain bank 
clerk of the town, and with some spirit and 
perfect gravity did so by exclaiming, 
"Why, John McGovern, of Lancaster, is 
the man that owns me property." Most 
of his witticisms and! perhaps the best are 
now forgotten, but some of his drolleries 
survive and are here set down ; some were 
received first hand and some are the com- 
mon property of all old residenters who 
enjoy fun. 

The late Isaac M. Bodine was for many 



THOMAS HARGADON 83 

years a justice of the peace in Wellsboro, 
and kept his office in a second-story room 
on the northwest side of Main Street. 
Bodine was a great wag, witty, humorous 
^nd withal somewhat cynical. He used to 
tell this story of Mr. Harden : One bitter 
cold morning in mid-winter he was en- 
gaged in writing in his docket the formal 
statement of the business of the previous 
day, when a man walked into his office who 
lived some miles from town and whom he 
knew well. The man backed up to the 
stove in the corner to thaw out the chill 
of his long morning ride. Presently in 
walked Mr. Harden, and with his char- 
acteristic cheery morning greeting to 
Bodine and the traveler, who was a 
stranger to him, took a place by his side 
near the stove. Bodine sat facing the stove, 
with the desk before him and head down, 
apparently absorbed with his docket en- 
tries, but in fact intently observant of 
what was transpiring near the stove. The 
stranger had a strikingly ugly face, with 
prominent teeth, hook nose, red hair and 
face covered nearly up to the eyes with 
scrubby beard, *'the color of old rope." Mr. 
Harden was at this time an elderly man 
without family and living a very solitary 



84 TALES OF TIOGA 

life for one naturally so social and do- 
mestic, and in the absence of other occu- 
pation was in the habit of gathering all 
local news and gossip in circulation. After 
glancing at the stranger out of the **tail 
of his eye," Mr. Harden began the follow- 
ing monologue: 'Would you be finding 
the sleighing good over your way?" No 
response. ''Did you drive all the way from 
your place this morning?" No response. 
Then followed a good deal of rubbing of 
one hand into the palm of the other, a 
flushing of the face with righteous indig- 
nation and a quick, angry turn of the head 
in the direction of the stranger; "Well I 
was just merely wishing to exchange salu- 
tations with you," said Harden, "and if 
you haven't the courtesy to reply that is 
not my fault. I was simply inquiring 
whether there is much sickness in your 
neighborhood." Just at the conclusion of 
the last inquiry the stranger, without tak- 
ing any notice of Mr. Harden, walked 
briskly past him within touching distance 
and passed out of the office. The silence 
was unbroken for several minutes, except 
by the scratching of Bodine's pen, who, 
with head down, was waiting results. Mr. 
Harden: "Isaac, do you know that man 



THOMAS HARGADON 85 

that just left your place of business?" 
Mr. Bodine: "Why, no, Uncle Tommy, I 
didn't notice who it was. Wasn't it one of 

the 's, of Delmar?" Mr. Harden: 

'It was not." Mr. Bodine: *T was very 
busy here and didn't notice who it was. 
Why do you ask?" Mr. Harden, still 
smarting under the discourtesy: "Because, 
Isaac, if I had that man's face I'd fight a 
dog." At this he in turn hurried out of 
the office, and Bodine never explained that 
the unfortunate stranger had been totally 
deaf and dumb from birth. 

Although not devoid of a sense of humor 
he never acquired, or, at any rate, never 
affected the American habit of "telling 
stories," or, in other words, he was not 
prone to repeat anecdotes or witticisms or 
humorous occurrences told by others. I 
remember but one exception. During many 
of the latter years of his life it was his 
habit to call in the morning at our office. 
He was never tedious and was always 
polite and considerate, merely stepping in 
and with a vigorous rubbing of one hand 
into the other, and with a hearty morning 
greeting and some observation about the 
weather or about some matter of passing 
interest, took his leave. 



86 TALES OF TIOGA 

One morning he came in as usual, and 
finding me alone, said that while dressing 
that morning he had remembered a boy- 
hood experience that he thought would in- 
terest me if I would spare time to hear it. 
I assured him that I would be delighted to 
listen, and although I cannot reproduce his 
inimitable mannerisms and rich West Ire- 
land brogue, I write the story as he gave 
it. When I was a boy my father took me 
to the county-town to see a criminal court 
in session. An itinerant judge was hold- 
ing what we called the assizes. Soon after 
we entered the court-room a man was 
called to the prisoner's dock charged with 
some petty offense, and his Lordship on 
the bench asked him if he had pleaded to 
the charge of which he stood indicted. The 
man answered that he had not, whereupon 
his Lordship directed him to plead either 
guilty or not guilty. At this the man said 
he had noticed that Mr. Mulcahey was in 
the court-room and he would like to ask 
whether Mr. Mulcahey was going to be 
sworn as a witness on behalf of the Queen. 
His Lordship answered that he did not 
know whether the public prosecutor in- 
tended swearing Mr. Mulcahey, and asked 
what difference it could make with his plea 



THOMAS HARGADON 87 

whether Mr. Mulcahey was sworn or not. 
To which the defendant answered : "Well, 
if Mr. Mulcahey is going to be sworn, I 
plead guilty. Not that I am, your Lord- 
ship. I am as innocent as the child at 
your wife's breast, but out of regard for 
the salvation of Mulcahey's soul, I plead 
guilty." 

At the time of my earliest distinct 
remembrance of Mr. Harden, say about 
1875, he had two large store buildings with 
well-filled cellars and warerooms in a rear 
building, and did a very large business in 
merchandising in boots, shoes, dry goods, 
groceries and provisions of all kinds. A 
certain man, whom I will call B. C. Hughes, 
was at the time of this occurrence engaged 
in a small way in the lumber business not 
far from Wellsboro. He had formerly 
been a customer of Mr. Harden's and was 
still indebted to him in a pretty large sum. 
One morning Mr. Harden called at the 
store of one of his competitors, with whom 
he was on friendly terms, and after hearty 
morning salutations had been exchanged 
the following conversation ensued: Mr. 
Harden: 'T hope you will not think me 
presumptuous, or that I am attempting to 
interfere with your business, but I have 



88 TALES OF TIOGA 

observed Mr. B. C. Hughes frequenting 
your place of business of late." The com- 
petitor: "Why, yes; Hughes comes in 
occasionally to do a little trading." Mr. 
Harden : ''Exactly so, and may I ask does 
he pay cash?" The competitor: "Why, 
sometimes he pays cash and sometimes he 
asks credit." Mr. Harden: "To be sure, 
just as I expected. Now, my friend, I 
want to give you a bit of advice in the 
friendliest manner. It is my opinion that 

Mr. Hughes is a d d fine man for you 

to be making a stranger of." 

Judging by the anecdote I am about to 
relate, I conclude that Mr. Hughes never 
paid Mr. Harden's account, for years 
after the happening of the last told story, 
in fact not long before his death, I met 
Mr. Harden one morning as I reached my 
office, standing on the sidewalk near the 
curb. He saluted me as follows : "Robert, 
do you observe the man facing us on the 
opposite curb, and do you know him?" 
To which I replied that I did observe and 
did know the man, and volunteered the 
information that it was Mr. B. C. Hughes. 
"Indeed, indeed, you do know him," said 
Mr. Harden. "But did you ever par- 
ticularly observe his countenance?" Mr. 



THOMAS HARGADON 89 

Hughes certainly had a very remarkable 
physiognomy; large, smooth-shaven face, 
large, straight, grinning mouth, and the 
whole face deeply furrowed in every direc- 
tion. Add to all the rest the fact that he 
had a trick of closing one eye and of widen- 
ing his large mouth in what appeared to 
be a very sinister grin, by way of emphasis 
to his conversation, and having noted all 
this many times, I could and did without 
hesitation reply to Mr. Harden that I had 
particularly observed Mr. Hughes' counte- 
nance. "Well," said Mr. Harden, ''having 
observed it, you will agree with me that 
it is a wonderful countenance, surely a 
very wonderful countenance. Do you 
know, Robert, if I was a constable and had 
a warrant for the devil Td arrest that man 
on suspicion." 

Not long after my father, Hugh Young, 
moved into the house which he built and 
spent his declining years in, he gave a 
dinner party to all of the men then living 
who were residents of Wellsboro when he 
came to the town to reside permanently, 
in December, 1858. Thomas Harden was 
one of these, and as he had never been in 
the house before, he asked me to show 
him about. I gladly took him from cellar 



90 TALES OF TIOGA 

to garret, and when the round was finished 
he regaled me with the following: 

"Robert, I am reminded of a little story, 
and I am wondering whether I dare tell it 
to your father. It was like this : A young 
man in my town in Ireland studied for and 
took holy orders. He came to Canada and 
finally got a fine parish and lived in a fine 
house. After a while his elder brother 
came over from Ireland to visit him, and 
after looking the house all over he said to 
his brother, the priest: *Jock, it's a fine 
house ye have. I hope ye come honestly 
by it.' " 

During the seventies, and probably 
before and after, there lived in Wellsboro 
an Irishman named Patrick Donehue, who 
was very well known and only less witty 
than Mr. Harden. Although not co-re- 
•ligionists, they were great friends and 
found much pleasure in each other's so- 
ciety. Pat occasionally took what he 
styled "Wee sup liquor," and, as this 
occurred only at long intervals, a little 
went a good ways. 

Once upon a time Pat went to Harden's 
store to buy a suit of clothes and was 
waited on by the proprietor himself. Pat 
made his selection and was told that the 



THOMAS HARGADON 91 

price of the suit was $28.00 if charged and 
$25.00 if paid when the clothes were taken. 
Pat agreed to the terms and said he would 
take the clothes then and pay the same 
day. He took the clothes, but a couple of 
months passed before he found it con- 
venient to pay; and it so happened that 
the very day he was moved to pay he was 
earlier moved to take "wee sup liquor." 
He learned from a clerk that the charge 
was $28.00 and not $25.00, whereupon he 
sought and found the proprietor, who con- 
firmed the charge. Pat's recourse was 
"billingsgate," which was replied to in 
kind, until finally Harden, backed by his 
corps of clerks, ordered Pat off the prem- 
ises. As he came out of the store he spied 
my father not far away and made for him 
head on, red faced and wild eyed, much to 
the latter's surprise, as previously Pat had 
always carefully avoided him when "in his 
cups." As soon as he was within hailing 
distance Pat saluted my father as follows : 
"Mr. Young, you know everything about 
Ireland. How many Jews were there in 
Ireland in 1847 ?" My father, though sur- 
prised, was not disconcerted, and was cer- 
tain that something good was coming if 
he .made a prompt and definite reply. 



92 TALES OF TIOGA 

After a becoming pause for recollection he 
replied by saying: *Tat, in 1847 there 
were just three hundred Jews in Ireland." 
Pat's rejoinder came instanter. ''Bedad, 
there's only two hundred and ninety-nine 
there now, for Tom Harden's come over 
since." 

There lived and still live in and about 
Wellsboro members of a prominent and 
numerous family named English, but their 
name is misleading, as they were origi- 
nally Irish by blood and characteristics. 
The family was partial to a small number 
of Christian names, including John, Rich- 
ard, Robert, William and James, and they 
were also prone to give members of their 
own clan ''nick" names, partly from wag- 
gishness and partly as a matter of con- 
venience to distinguish one bearer of a 
certain name from others of the same 
name. Here are a few by way of illustra- 
tion: Stiff neck Johnny, Delmar Dick, 
Pussley Jim, Black Jim, Ihorn Jim, Rough 
Bill, Bucktail Bill, Blatherskite Bill, 
Drunken Willie, etc. 

Blatherskite Bill prided himself much 
on his military bearing and record, and 
claimed to have been a member of the 
"Queen's Royal Guards" during the Cri- 



THOMAS HARGADON 93 

mean War and to have taken a prominent 
part at Balaklava and at Inkerman 
Heights. He was tall and very erect, and 
spoke with a sharp, incisive twang. In 
addition to his military accomplishments 
he was also a "jack carpenter" and an all- 
around scientist. Once upon a time he 
became indebted to Mr. Harden for goods 
and wares sold and delivered, and Harden, 
despairing of getting cash, sought to get 
the score closed with skilled labor. At the 
time of which I write a mercantile busi- 
ness of the dimensions of Mr. Harden's, 
carried on in a community where currency 
was scarce, made it desirable to exchange 
one form of personal property for another, 
and barter was very common. In this 
manner Mr. Harden at times accumulated 
lumber, cord wood and all kinds of farm 
products taken in exchange for groceries, 
clothing, etc. 

At one time the alley-way and vacant 
lot near the rear end of his store building, 
having become congested with four-foot 
fire wood and various sizes and kinds of 
lumber, he decided to engage Blatherskite 
Bill English to build him a sawhorse with 
some of the lumber in the alley, and then 
to get some of his unskilled debtors to 



94 TALES OF TIOGA 

convert the cord wood into stove-wood 
length. Enghsh undertook the commis- 
sion and proceeded with his tools, or, as 
he would have styled them, "with the 
proper utensils," to the lumber piles in 
the rear. He found the only timber fit for 
the sawhorse at the bottom of a pile, 
which it was necessary to tear down. In 
this operation the lumber was promis- 
cuously strewn about the landscape, and 
at this critical moment Mr. Harden ap- 
peared on the scene. Harden being an 
orderly man, and all kinds of lumber look- 
ing alike to him, the havoc wrought by 
English in the course of a few minutes 
shocked him greatly, and he pitched at 
that high-strung military gentleman with 
the following tirade: ''God help me, Mr. 
English, you're destroying me lumber, 
you're destroying me property ! Come out 
o' that! Me little daughter Maggie could 
do better than this. Come out o' that this 
minute. God help me!" 

Mr. English, though highly indignant 
and deeply injured as to his feelings, pre- 
served his dignity, dropped his tools, 
straightened himself to his full height, 
removed the short-stemmed black clay 
pipe from his mouth, worn bowl down, and 



THOMAS HARGADON 95 

replied as follows: **Mr. Harden, sir, I 
repel your base insiniations with scorn, 
and I would have you to understand, sir, 
that there's a devil of a pile of angles in 
a sawhorse." And with this he gathered 
up "the proper utensils" and went home. 

A certain well-known man of our town 
held a high, perhaps the highest, position 
in a quasi-military organization, which 
was part of a great fraternal society. The 
military uniform of this organization was 
brilliant and that of the officers exceed- 
ingly gorgeous. I was standing with Mr. 
Harden one day when the high officer in 
question passed down the street on the 
opposite side in full regalia, and the width 
of the street, a hundred feet, was really 
needed to give full effect to the uniform. 
Mr. Harden called my attention to our 
passing neighbor with the following excla- 
mations: "Robert, do you observe the 
military gentleman on the opposite side? 
And do you observe his splendor, and isn't 
it wonderful? Do you mind the fabulous 
gold lace? Why, Napoleon wouldn't have 
made a corporal to him." 

This catalogue of droll stories might be 
continued indefinitely, but they illustrate 
but one phase of his character — one gift 



96 TALES OF TIOGA 

of nature. He possessed many other 
attractive characteristics. He was a truly 
pious man and very tolerant towards 
others holding different religious beliefs 
from his own. I remember having seen 
him in an audience at a Methodist "re- 
vival" meeting, when he gave respectful 
attention during the whole session. His 
whole life conduct was mixed with sympa- 
thetic kindliness and acts of charity. He 
kept his faith and lived truly according to 
his lights. And although no foundations 
have been created in his name and no 
''cloud-capped towers" have been builded 
to his memory, yet his life made an impres- 
sion for good upon our community and the 
world is better for his having lived in it. 



AN INQUIRY AS TO THE LAST ABO- 
RIGINAL INHABITANT OF 
TIOGA COUNTY 

Address delivered before the Tioga County 
Historical Society, April 8, 1907 

In the absence of a protest from the 
Indian, I hope none of my hearers will 
take umbrage at my reference to him as 
our ^'fellow-countryman." I am reminded 
of Bayard Taylor's anecdote of a trip on 
foot into the interior of Bohemia in the 
days before the American had become a 
traveler abroad — a "globe trotter." He 
stopped for the night at a country hamlet, 
and being a stranger and evidently a for- 
eigner, was an object of curiosity to the 
villagers ; but when they were told by the 
stranger that he was an American, their 
curiosity was blended with incredulity and 
suspicion, "for," said they, "we know bet- 
ter; we are not ignorant; Americans are 
red men." 

The American Indian has been aptly 
called a child of nature, but to make a dis- 
criminating estimate of his seemingly 
paradoxical character is not an easy task. 
In him were united all the vices and all 

7 97 



98 TALES OF TIOGA 

the arts which are resorted to the world 
over by the weak as a defense against the 
strong. And yet, blended with these vices 
and these arts were many of those lofty 
qualities which are always found asso- 
ciated with strength and courage. The 
first object of life was to sustain life, and 
to do this meant endless struggle for daily 
food. His life depended upon the skill with 
which he encountered the strongest and 
fiercest wild beasts or the expertness with 
which he used his bow and arrow or his 
tomahawk. Speaking generally, the abun- 
dance of crops or the fertility of the soil 
was no concern of his; but the skill and 
deftness, the cunning and craft which 
enabled him to outwit and circumvent the 
most timid, the most keen-scented and 
keen-sighted of the animals were vital to 
his existence. 

Men of races less gifted in woodcraft 
were amazed at the ease with which he 
followed a trail invisible to them. His 
sight excelled that of the most practiced 
mariner, and so surprising was his stealth 
that he could walk with rapidity over a 
cushion of fallen leaves and broken twigs 
to the very side of a browsing deer. The 
perfection with which he imitated the bark 



ABORIGINAL INHABITANT 99 

of the wolf, the whistle of the deer, the 
hoot of the owl and the scream of the 
wildcat was wont to deceive not only men, 
but the creature imitated. 

Physical courage and a kind of moral 
courage were to be found in him developed 
to an amazing degree. He submitted to 
the tortures of his enemies — tortures the 
most dreadful which a ferocious and 
imaginative race could devise — with per- 
fect fortitude. A fortitude as perfect as 
that exhibited by James Wolf on the plains 
of Abraham, by Montcalm at the same 
place on the same day, by Walter Raleigh 
on the scaffold, or by others of the count- 
less heroes who have "weathered the 
cape," as it were, in the crucial test of a 
violent death. 

"While his ears were being lopped off, 
while his nose was being slit, while slices 
of flesh were being cut from his body and 
the bleeding wounds smeared with hot 
ashes, while his legs were roasting, while 
his arms were being wrenched with red- 
hot tongs, while his tormentors were 
drinking his blood and the flames leaped 
high about him, he shouted his death song 
with a steady and defiant voice, until his 
tongue was torn out, his heart was dug 



100 TALES OF TIOGA 

from his trunk or his brains knocked out 
with a tomahawk."* 

In an extremity of physical clanger, with 
all opportunity for the exercise of dissimu- 
lation, treachery or guile removed, the 
Indian was a man of unquestionable 
physical courage of the most sublime type. 
If one could fancy an Indian breaking 
silence at all under such circumstances, 
one might easily imagine him using the 
words of Caesar to the captain of the dis- 
tressed vessel : "Fear not ; your ship bears 
Caesar and his fortunes"; or under very 
similar circumstances he might have used 
the words of William of Orange, when in 
a rowboat, buffeted by the ice and current 
of the North Sea in the darkness and fog 
of a winter's night, he rebuked the dis- 
mayed and discouraged sailors with : "For 
shame ! Are you afraid to die in my com- 
pany?" 

"The chief passion of this Indian of ours 
was war. But as much as he loved war, 
the open, bold, front-to-front warfare prac- 
ticed by all civilized nations had no charms 
for him. To his mind it was not only folly 
but madness to kill an enemy at the risk 
of his own life, when he might circumvent 

*"McMaster's Hist. People U. S., Vol. I, pag-e 96. 



ABORIGINAL INHABITANT 101 

him by cunning, overpower him by a sud- 
den dash from an ambuscade or shoot him 
in the back from behind a tree."* 

At the battle of Steinkirk the King's 
household troop formed part of Luxem- 
bourg's command. The troop was com- 
manded by a youth known as the Duke of 
Charters, and the company was made up 
of the scions of the most ancient families 
in France, including, besides the com- 
mander, two other princes of the blood 
royal. After joining the army some days 
were spent in frivolities and much display 
of lace-trimmed velvet clothes. But sud- 
denly the French were attacked by the 
whole allied army. The attack must be 
repelled, and finally, to their great joy, 
Luxembourg consented that the King's 
troop might lead the charge. Like butter- 
flies, they were bedecked with lace and 
baubles, and gaily and jestingly charged 
an army in front. When the marshal gave 
the word the troopers came on with their 
carbines slung at their backs. *'No firing, 
sword in hand," ran all through the ranks 
of this terrible body. *'Do it with the cold 
steel." Whatever of valor or heroism was 
displayed by such conduct was not under- 

*McMaster's Hist. People U. S., Vol I. page 97. 



102 TALES OF TIOGA 

stood by the American savage. By him 
this would have been regarded as childish 
unwisdom and unmitigated waste of life. 

The greatest of all earthly pleasures for 
him was when, in the stillness of the dead 
hour of the night, he aroused his sleeping 
enemies with that unearthly yell that has 
come to be one of the synonyms of things 
most dreadful, and scalped and massacred 
them without respect to age or sex, in the 
light of their burning homes. 

We have testimony from many cool and 
brave men, among them a man no less 
renowned than Sir William Johnson, of the 
horrid character of the Indian yell; how 
that no number of repetitions could strip 
it of its terrors; how that, even though 
anticipated, no heart was stout enough to 
resist a qualm at its dreadful utterance; 
how that the most experienced and most 
steadfast stood momentarily paralyzed at 
the first sound of this fiendish note; how 
that to the very last at the sound of it 
the blood ran cold, thought as well as 
action seemed suspended and the heart 
seemed to cease beating. 

The contrast which this savage nature 
presented in peace and war is indeed 
striking. In time of war, when the hatchet 



ABORIGINAL INHABITANT 103 

was dug up, the pipe of peace broken, the 
war dance danced out, the incantations 
finished, the medicine men consulted and 
the chiefs and sachems had ended their 
"big talks," then all was activity. On the 
warpath he was patient, tireless and 
undaunted. He would tramp all day in 
the depth of winter, wade morasses, ford 
streams, breast snowdrifts waist deep, 
and lie down at night hungry and tireless, 
wrapt in a scanty robe, to his miserable 
rest, with perfect stoicism. 

But after the campaign had ended and 
the peace pipe had passed around and the 
wampum belts had been exchanged, then 
it is that we see the other side of this 
astonishing character. He is lazy and 
filthy. He gives himself over to sleep, 
gluttony, debauchery, gambling and sloth. 
He is like a child in fancy, but unlike men 
of other races in reason. To attribute to 
him fancy, merely, is not sufficient. He 
has more than fancy; he has imagination. 
As is natural to a being with lively imagi- 
nation, unrestrained or corrected by the 
faculty of logical reasoning, he is intensely 
superstitious. Everything animate and 
inanimate is clothed by him with super- 
natural attributes. 



104 TALES OF TIOGA 

But of the chivalrous attitude towards 
the other sex, of the romantic sentiment 
of love, he was an utter stranger. Misery 
or illness, misfortune or the sight of suf- 
fering excited no pity in him. Pity was ab- 
sent from the Indian breast; affection for 
children, affection for his squaw was never 
manifested by any of the marks which 
enable us to measure such sentiment. His 
squaw was his slave, and he brought her 
to his wigwam to perform the most 
menial duties and to minister to his wants. 
He exhibited no more affection for 'T<augh- 
ing Waters" or ^'Starlight" than a rabbit 
does for its mate, nor did he gratify the 
mother by any seeming affection for his 
offspring. If he traveled, as most did, the 
squaw trudged along, bearing the principal 
burden, including the papoose, and if the 
brave possessed a horse it was led by the 
squaw, who still carried the papoose, the 
horse bearing the wigwam and the few 
rude domestic utensils of stone or sun- 
baked clay, the lord of the outfit stalking 
ahead free handed. If in time of peace 
and repose, the squaw gathered the fuel, 
hetcheled the soil, planted the maize, cared 
for it and harvested the crop. She deco- 
rated her lord's clothing with that peculiar 



ABORIGINAL INHABITANT 105 

bead and feather work so characteristic of 
the race. War and the chase were his only 
serious occupations, and all manual labor, 
all domestic care and all drudgery fell upon 
the squaw. 

The poetical and chivalrous heroes whom 
we meet in the novels and poems of Cooper 
and Longfellow never existed elsewhere. 

The Indian, male as well as female, was 
exceedingly fond of bright colors. The 
most stolid and sedate brave would go into 
ecstacies at sight of a red flannel shirt or 
a string of variegated beads, and he would 
willingly purchase a piece of bright-hued 
cotton cloth by paying many times its 
value in fine furs. 

While at the Buffalo Exposition in 1902 
I visited the Indian village and spent some 
time there well entertained. The chief 
attraction of the Indian exhibit was the 
United States Government's prisoner, the 
famous Geronimo, the conquered chief of 
the Apaches. General Miles, who finally 
subdued him and his tribe after the most 
protracted of all Indian campaigns, de- 
scribed him as the most blood-thirsty and 
cruel of mankind. After one of the shoot- 
ing and riding exhibitions given regularly 
every day, my brother and I slipped into 



106 TALES OF TIOGA 

the enclosure and got somewhat behind 
the scenes. While standing near what 
seemed to be a sort of storeroom, contain- 
ing some brooms, paint pails, pieces of 
lumber, barrels, etc., we were delighted to 
observe Geronimo wandering aimlessly 
toward us, being off duty between exhibi- 
tions, and seemingly seeking solitude. He 
walked into the little room, and, keenly 
examining everything, spied a barrel half 
filled with yellow ochre. He wet his index 
finger, dipped it into the barrel, threw a 
furtive glance our way, placed his finger 
at the juncture of his eyebrows and drew 
a wide, yellow band down his broad cop- 
per-colored nose. He was then an old man, 
and I was reminded of ^'ruling passion 
strong in death." 

But I am admonished that I must cease 
my general observations and become more 
specific. Before doing so, however, I wish 
to venture an opinion that, speaking 
largely, and taking the average member 
of any race as the standard of measure, I 
doubt if the most highly civilized people 
present a more complex mental and moral 
organization than this same American 
savage. 

At the period when Rene Robert Cave- 



ABORIGINAL INHABITANT 107 

lier, Sieur de La Salle, parted with Count 
Frontenac at Quebec, resolved to traverse 
the Mississippi to its mouth, the Indians 
east of that river might have been divided 
into three great families, the Mobilian, the 
Algonquin and the Iroquois. 

'Toremost in war, foremost in eloquence, 
foremost in the savage arts of policy stood 
the fierce people called by themselves 
Hoden-os-aunee, and by the French the 
Iroquois."* This name has come to be ap- 
plied to a whole family of the same blood, 
but as originally applied it included only 
those tribes which are of present interest 
to us; those dwelling within the present 
limits of the State of New York. The 
Iroquois, in the limited application of the 
name, and as we think of them, consisted 
of five tribes distributed across the State 
from east to west in the order named : the 
Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the 
Cayugas and the Senecas. 

They were a stationary people and abode 
along the banks of the Mohawk River, 
around the ''finger lakes" of central New 
York and near the southern shore of Lake 



*"The Conspiracy of Pont'iac," Vol. I, page 99, 
Parkman. 



108 TALES OF TIOGA 

Ontario and along the beautiful Genesee 
River. 

With all their mental superiority they 
had not advanced in the arts of living 
beyond their Algonquin neighbors, except 
in the matter of agriculture, which had, 
compared with the conditions of the same 
art in Europe, reached no mean state of 
development. Denonville, in 1687, and 
Count Frontenac, nine years later, found 
the maize fields extending fully six miles 
from their villages, and found immense 
stores of corn among the Seneca settle- 
ments and at Onondaga. And General 
Sullivan in 1779 spoke with astonishment 
of the quantities of foodstuffs, consisting 
of corn, beans and squashes, found among 
the Cayuga and Seneca settlements, and 
of the extent and number and age of the 
apple orchards. 

Their geographical location, in a com- 
paratively level country, conveniently in- 
tersected in all directions by rivers, lakes, 
and the great inland seas, together with 
their stationary habits and agricultural 
arts, no doubt contributed largely to their 
dominating superiority. ''But the true 
fountain of their success is to be found in 
their inherent energy, wrought to the most 



ABORIGINAL INHABITANT 109 

effective action under a political fabric 
well suited to the Indian life; in their 
mental and moral organization; in their 
insatiable ambition and restless ferocity.* 
In their scheme of government, as in 
their social customs and religious rites, 
the Iroquois displayed, in full symmetry 
and matured strength, the character- 
istics which in other tribes are merely 
indicated, or have been withered at the 
root, or are faintly visible in an imperfect 
germ. Each of the five tribes had an or- 
ganization of its own. Each had sachems 
and subordinate chiefs who regulated its 
internal affairs. But when any matter 
arose which concerned the whole confed- 
eracy, when foreign powers were to be 
l;reated with; war to be declared; peace 
to be concluded; whenever deliberation 
seemed to be desirable, then all the sach- 
ems of the several tribes were convened 
in the great Council House at Onondaga, 
and no matter how great the excitement 
or how momentous the occasion, the ses- 
sions were conducted with a dignity and 
decorum, with a strict and undeviating 
adherence to immemorial customs and 



*"The Conspiracy of Pontiac," Vol. I, page 11, 
Parkman. 



110 TALES OF TIOGA 

rules of procedure, which would have ex- 
cited the wonder and admiration of the 
Sanhedrim of Jerusalem, the English 
House of Lords or the United States 
Senate. 

But the true secret of the indestruc- 
tible vitality of the Iroquois confederacy 
(which recognized no law and no author- 
ity to enforce law except the moral law 
of tradition and custom or usage) was the 
system of totemship. "It was this which 
gave the structure its elastic strength, 
and but for this, a mere confederacy of 
jealous and warlike tribes must soon have 
been rent asunder by shocks from without 
or discord from within."* At some 
period lost to history it is probable that 
all the scattered tribes of the Iroquois 
family formed a single nation. For it is 
certain that notwithstanding their separa- 
tion into tribes, beneath and irrespective 
of their tribal union the whole family were 
bound together by eight totemic clans. 
These totemic clans (the word clan being 
used to avoid confusion with tribe or fam- 
ily) were bound together with the closest 
possible ties of fraternity, and must not be 



*"The Conspiracy of Pontiac," Vol. I, page 13, 
Parkman. 



ABORIGINAL INHABITANT 111 

confused with the tribal organization or 
with the organization of the Iroquois con- 
federacy. Thus the confederacy was knit- 
ted together, not only by tribal ties and 
the confederated ties of the five tribes, but 
by the singular and mysterious totemic in- 
stitution which formed an additional eight- 
fold bond, and to this hour the remnants 
of these clans cling together, even as 
against their tribal allegiance, with invin- 
cible tenacity. To different totems attach 
different degrees of rank and dignity. 
That of the bear may be entitled to name 
the chief sachem of the tribe; or that of 
the wolf may be entitled to perform cer- 
tain mystic or religious rites, and so on; 
but each man is proud of his badge, and 
will maintain its dignity and claim to rank 
with his eloquence or with his life. One 
of the sage customs interwoven with this 
system of moral government, the impor- 
tance of which cannot be over-estimated 
in any consideration of this unique polity, 
was the custom of descent in the female 
line. The rudiments of this custom seem 
to have been general among all families 
and tribes, but the Iroquois adhered to it 
with great rigidity and with evident ad- 
vantage. The office of Sachem must pass 



112 TALES OF TIOGA 

not to the last chief's son, but to his 
younger brother, or to his sister's son, or 
to some collateral kinsman descended in 
the female line. Thus the Sachem's power 
is constantly deflected into the collateral 
branches of his family, and one of the 
strongest temptations to ambition was cut 
off. Members of the same totemic clan 
never inter-married. And if a brave of 
the totem of the otter married a squaw 
of the totem of the eagle, their offspring 
belonged to the totem of the eagle, and not 
of the otter. As has been said, the order 
of descent was a custom merely, but an 
inflexible custom. The Indian had no laws, 
and recognized no executive power author- 
ized to coerce or discipline or punish him. 
Every man was the avenger of his own 
wrong, and even the great Council at 
Onondaga had no power to compel the exe- 
cution of its decrees. It is a remarkable 
fact, and one highly to the honor of the 
Indian character, that reverence for cus- 
tom and ancient usage, mere moral power, 
exercised an authority over him which he 
would not yield to any other power on 
earth. 

A minute study of this marvelous de- 
mocracy of the forest, with its cunning 



ABORIGINAL INHABITANT 113 

restraints, balances and counter-balances 
upon the elementary impulses of the 
human soul, might raise an interesting 
query as to whether this system does not 
deserve a place in that galaxy of ideal 
republics made up of More's "Utopia," 
Bacon's "New Atlantis," Campanella's 
"City of the Sun," etc. 

When Jacques Cartier first saw the St. 
Lawrence (as late even as when Samuel 
Champlain first saw the enchanting lake 
which bears his name), the field of activ- 
ity, or, to use a phrase in vogue in diplo- 
macy, the Iroquois' "sphere of influence," 
was confined within the limits of the ter- 
ritory now embraced by the state of New 
York. But by the middle of the 17th cen- 
tury they had reached their maximum in 
the solidity and tenacity of their confed- 
eracy ; had attained their greatest numeri- 
cal strength and physical development; 
had cultivated that insensate ferocity and 
inordinate pride (which led them to regard 
all other races or tribes as children or as 
"women") to the highest imaginable de- 
gree, and seemed in all essentials mature 
as a race for that extraordinary quarter 
century of conquest which, I venture to 
suggest, has never been excelled in the 



114 TALES OF TIOGA 

matter of the territory covered in the an- 
nals of history. Their geographical loca- 
tion contributed to their success. On the 
east, their natural territory adjoined those 
New England tribes which occupied so 
much of the attention of the early Puritan. 
These New England tribes were all of the 
Algonquin family. The same may be said 
of the country on the northeast and north 
of the Iroquois. On the northwest were 
other tribes of the Iroquois family — the 
Wyandottes or Hurons, the Neutrals, and 
Tobacco or Didondadies nations. On the 
west, in closest proximity came the Eries, 
and southwest and south the Andastes, 
both of which were also members of the 
Iroquois family ; and southeast, that great 
tribe known to themselves as the Lenni 
Lenape and to the English as the Dela- 
wares. 

Thus we see that with the exception of 
the Tuscaroras, far, far to the south, all of 
the Iroquois family, in and out of the con- 
federacy, may fancifully be said to have 
formed an island entirely surrounded by 
the great Algonquin family. In 1649 the 
cyclone broke. The Hurons, their kindred, 
and the allies of the French, were the first 
to receive the onslaught of the Iroquois. 



ABORIGINAL INHABITANT 115 

In a single winter's campaign the power 
of the Hurons was broken; as a nation 
they were destroyed; some took refuge in 
the frozen regions of Lake Superior ; some 
fled toward Quebec, where they found a 
permanent refuge, and some were ab- 
sorbed by the Iroquois, after the insensate 
fury of the squaws had been satiated with 
the tortures of the captives. 

This custom of adoption by the Iroquois 
was common, and was expressed by a word 
which meant "flesh cut into pieces and 
scattered among the tribes," the brave 
being sent to one tribe, the squaw to 
another and the papoose to still another. 

The Neutrals were the next to fall, fol- 
lowed by the Eries, who in turn were fol- 
lowed by the Andastes, the Delawares, the 
Abenakis and the Ottawas, a numerous 
people inhabiting the borders of the river 
bearing their name — all sank under the 
relentless fury of the confederacy. In 
the north, in the west, and in the south, 
the Iroquois' conquests embraced every ad- 
jacent tribe; and meanwhile, and at one 
and the same time, their war parties were 
harassing the French colonists in Canada 
with reiterated and almost continuous in- 



116 TALES OF TIOGA 

roads, and were yelling the warwhoop 
under the very walls of Quebec. 

Thus, in a period of less than a quarter 
century, the nations most brave and 
powerful of the North American savages 
yielded to the arms of the confederacy. 
Nor did their triumphs end here. Within 
the same short period they penetrated the 
mountain fastnesses of the Cherokees and 
Chocktaws in west Georgia and the Caro- 
linas with repeated and devastating for- 
ays; spread havoc and dismay among the 
distant Illinois ; and on the east, the tribes 
of New England fled in terror and without 
resistance at the first peal of the demoniac 
yell of the Mohawk. *'Nor was it the In- 
dians alone who quailed before this fero- 
cious valor." The Colony of New France, 
the darling dream of the Grand Monarque, 
was sport in their hands; they defied the 
power of Denonville, they jeered at the 
threats of the redoubtable Frontenac; all 
Canada shook with the fury of their on- 
set; the people fled to the forts for 
their lives; the blood-besmeared conquer- 
ors roamed from settlement to settlement 
like howling wolves, and while they scoffed 
at the power of the great Sun King, his 



ABORIGINAL INHABITANT 117 

colony and his subjects trembled on the 
brink of ruin. 

When the year 1675 had been reached 
every tribe and nation from Quebec to 
Lake Superior; from the Mississippi to 
the Atlantic; from the Ottawa on the 
north to the regions of the Cherokees on 
the south, acknowledged submission to the 
savage fury, the merciless craft, and the 
boundless pride of the confederacy. Even 
the Delawares (pre-eminent in the Algon- 
quin family, and respectfully referred to 
by the honorable designation of grand- 
father of the family) were paying annual 
tribute to the confederacy at the very time 
of the making of the famous treaty with 
Penn under the oak at Kensington, and 
publicly acknowledged their subjection and 
humiliation by recognizing and responding, 
when addressed by an Iroquois, to the des- 
ignation of "women." 

When we pause and consider the numer- 
ical strength of this haughty power, and 
discover that at the beginning of what 
might be called their foreign conquests, 
when they were undoubtedly more numer- 
ous than at any other time; when we be- 
come satisfied from the most reliable au- 
thorities that the united cantons of the 



118 TALES OF TIOGA 

dreaded confederacy could not have mus- 
tered more than four thousand fighting 
men, *'we stand amazed at the folly and 
dissensions among their victims which left 
so vast a region the prey of a handful of 
bold marauders." 

Such ferocious rage for slaughter as is 
presented by this picture gives justifica- 
tion for the belief expressed, either by 
Fiske or Parkman, that the advent of the 
white man in America positively retarded 
the destruction and prolonged the exist- 
ence of the American aborigines — such 
was the devastating fury of their inter- 
tribal warfare. 

I doubt if any territory in the United 
States east of the Mississippi of equal ex- 
tent is so destitute of Indian interests as 
that triangle in Pennsylvania bounded 
north by the New York boundary line, east 
and southeast by the east branch of the 
Susquehanna, and west and southwest by 
the west branch of the Susquehanna. It 
is mountainous, almost without lakes, and 
difficult of travel on foot, except in certain 
narrow trails, few in number. As a last 
resort for big game it was ideal, and that 
it was regarded by the Indian as a hunt- 
ing ground merely, and that it contained 



ABORIGINAL INHABITANT 119 

no important permanent settlement, seems 
to be provable and admitted. 

That there were at least three well- 
known trails passing through the terri- 
tory embraced within this county is easily 
susceptible of proof, and that there were 
many convenient stopping places, used 
from year to year as camping grounds, is 
also provable. These trails or footpaths, 
and these camping- grounds, sometimes 
long unused and sometimes busy thorough- 
fares, will, I hope, form the subject of an 
interesting paper by some member of the 
Society. But owing to its growing length, 
they must not be discussed in this paper, 
and I shall finish this rather inconclusive 
article with a few more general observa- 
tions. 

Can it be doubted that by the end of 
the third quarter of the seventeenth cen- 
tury the Iroquois roamed through our 
county with the same feeling of security 
and proprietary rights that he felt on the 
shores of Cayuga Lake ? No North Ameri- 
can savage could at that time presume to 
trespass so near the seat of that dread 
power. While it is true that the Iroquois' 
sphere of influence was somewhat re- 
stricted during the period between 1675 



120 TALES OF TIOGA 

and 1775, yet it was due to the encroach- 
ments of the white man, and not to any 
of their savage rivals. And the Iroquois 
remained stationary for a longer period 
and to a later date than any other of the 
savage nations. By 1775 the most eastern 
settlements of any consequence belonging 
to the Delawares were on the Ohio, and 
although their prowess and valor had re- 
moved the stigma of "women," they never 
assumed, unaided by the white man, to 
question again the superiority of the Iro- 
quois. 

Can it be doubted that a people who 
would joyfully undertake a journey on 
foot, and perhaps in the winter season, to 
the Maine woods, or to the savannahs of 
Georgia, or to the shores of the Missis- 
sippi, would regard our beloved hills and 
valleys, distant fifty or a hundred miles 
from their ancient seats, in much the same 
sense that we regard our woodland park? 
I think not. I think the popular belief 
that the last of the aborigines to frequent 
this territory were the Senecas is correct. 
They were in closest proximity, their seats 
being due north; nature had provided 
them with a natural thoroughfare, which 
was not the case with the other nations 



ABORIGINAL INHABITANT 1^1 

of the confederacy; they were at all peri- 
ods of the confederacy the most numerous, 
being in fact more numerous than any 
two of the other nations at the zenith 
of the confederacy's strength, and com- 
prising about nine-twentieths of the total 
number of the confederated braves. 

If the last visitation of the Indian to 
Tioga County could have been realized at 
the time as such, what interest the visit 
should have excited! Who he was, what 
tribe he descended from, when and where 
the visitation occurred, would furnish a 
subject for an interesting though per- 
haps fruitless inquiry. But if some inter- 
loper of the white race, imbued with the 
spirit of this society, had asked this last 
red man who he was, it is conformable to 
the facts of history that his naturally 
spare and athletic body would have been 
straightened with the pride of conscious 
superiority, the most striking character- 
istic of his race ; that he would have tossed 
his large and Tartar-like countenance in 
the air and have announced, with a grunt 
of condescension, *T am a Seneca." 



WELLSBORO— TIOGA COUNTY 

Modesty and mental superiority are the 
chief characteristics of the people of Wells- 
boro and vicinity. Nay, the same is true 
of the whole county of Tioga. They con- 
stantly strive to avoid publicity. And it 
is probably these characteristics that cause 
them to think so complaisantly of the 
blunder made by the "Conscript Fathers" 
in locating the National Capital in a swamp 
on the banks of the Potomac. But these 
''Conscript Fathers" were little traveled, 
and ignorant of the fact that the Happy 
Valley of Rasselas might verily have been 
found in the center of what is now Tioga 
County. While their failure to locate 
Washington on the site of Wellsboro is, 
no doubt, a great misfortune for the 
nation at large, it is an ill wind that blows 
nobody good, and the fortunate ones are 
keeping very quiet about the matter in 
order to avoid jealous regret in the less 
fortunate. 

Wellsboro was founded in 1806 by 
William Hill Wells of the state of Dela- 
ware. It is a matter of no small satis- 
faction to the natives of Wellsboro that so 

122 



WELLSBORO 123 

distinguished a man should have founded 
the capital of Tioga County, and given his 
name thereto. 

His ancestry is traceable straight back 
to William the Conqueror. He was a 
United States Senator from Delaware, 
both before and after the founding of 
Wellsboro. He was a bold and hardy pio- 
neer, as well as a brilliant lawyer and 
statesman, and some people living else- 
where say that he stamped his own char- 
acteristics on all who have come after him 
in Wellsboro. Be that as it may, it is 
well known that while none have sought 
greatness many have had greatness thrust 
upon them. The many in question, how- 
ever, have been those who have been un- 
able longer to conceal their great merits 
and have been drafted, as it were, into 
some great calling to serve the common- 
weal. 

Many facts might be marshaled in sup- 
port of the theory that Senator Wells 
stamped upon all who were to come after 
him his own genius for office-holding, his 
eloquence and bold initiative. Some of 
these facts will be mentioned later. But 
another theory has been latterly advanced, 
fostered and promoted by certain bad- 



124 TALES OF TIOGA 

tempered people. In Froude's novel, "The 
Two Chiefs of Dunboy," the Irish hero is 
made to exclaim — "Why is it that no 
Irishman can succeed in life until after 
he has become expatriated?" Now these 
evil-minded people referred to have the 
effrontery to address this same inquiry to 
the people of Tioga County — "Why is it 
that no person born in Tioga County 
can succeed until after he has left the 
County?" Every one in or from Tioga 
County knows that this theory is ridicu- 
lous for two reasons — one being that no 
one from that fortunate region ever was 
or could become expatriated ; for no matter 
what unkind necessity causes him to so- 
journ elsewhere, he still lives and moves 
and has his being in memory and affection 
in Tioga County. This idea has been re- 
cently expressed by a local poet through 
the medium of prose much more eloquently 
than I could do, and I therefore quote — 
"Every Tioga County man or woman, no 
matter where he may roam, score high, 
score low, or score not at all, holds it in 
his heart that some day he is coming back 
home. The call of the hills is ever in his 
blood. No matter what success he may 
achieve, no matter what failure may be 



WELLSBORO 125 

his, he is coming back to pass his re- 
maining days in the rugged sweet envi- 
ronment of his nativity. And, Hkely, if 
he defers his coming till strength wanes 
so that he cannot make it while alive, the 
call of the hills is so keen in the blood that 
it is among his last requests to be laid 
away in the valleys of his boyhood, which 
ever recall those happy days, that in some 
way it may bring satisfaction to his life- 
less clay." 

And the other reason is that certain 
ones find the pace too fast at home and 
are pushed off the edge, as it were, and 
go into new fields to seek their fortunes; 
but even these are made happy by the 
fond ambition to come back home to spend 
their declining years, and to find decent 
burial. 

To the contrary, many facts may be 
marshaled in support of the theory that 
Senator Wells stamped his own character- 
istics upon all of his spiritual descendants. 
For although our people modestly strive 
to avoid his tendency towards ofRce-hold- 
ing and for doing bold and original things 
generally, they are not, alas! always suc- 
cessful. The truth could best be illus- 
trated by facts about home folks; but to 



126 TALES OF TIOGA 

mention them would incur their displeas- 
ure, because of their insuperable mod- 
esty. And so I am driven to mention 
some who repose in the cemeteries of 
Tioga County, and some who hope to do 
so — the former being indifferent, and the 
latter, being widely scattered, unable to 
protest in unison. The few referred to 
are not mentioned with any attempt at 
chronological order, professional grouping, 
or otherwise than hit or miss, and I pre- 
sume that the most distinguished will be 
thoughtlessly omitted. At any rate here 
goes: 

Victor A. Elliott, the first Chief Jus- 
tice of the Supreme Court of Colorado; 
Fred S. Bailey, who represented the City 
of Denver in the Colorado Senate; Ben- 
jamin F. Bush, at present President of 
the Missouri Pacific Railroad, the Denver 
and Rio Grande Railroad, the St. Louis & 
Iron Mountain Railroad, and the Western 
Pacific Railroad, and who is regarded 
as the greatest railroad manager in the 
country; Mortimer F. Elliott, Chief Coun- 
sel of the Standard Oil Company; B. F. 
Puffer of the Aeolian Building, New York 
City, who has revolutionized the art of 
photography and easily leads all others 



WELLSBORO 127 

in his calling; F. A. Van Valkenburg, 
President of the Board of Mercantile Ap- 
praisers of Philadelphia; Albert P. Cone, 
Assistant to the Chief Engineer of the 
Rock Island Lines; Jerome B. Niles, once 
Auditor General of the State; and John 
B. Cassoday, his cousin, author of "Cas- 
soday on Wills," and once Chief Justice 
of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. 

One of the finest exhibitions of pro- 
verbial Tioga County modesty and mag- 
nanimity occurred in 1909. When Roose- 
velt sent the battleship fleet around the 
world all of the commanders of the 
sixteen dreadnoughts should have been 
chosen from our county if merit alone 
counted, but out of consideration for the 
remaining ninety millions of our people, 
Tioga renounced her natural prerogative 
and only one battleship was commanded 
by a Tioga County man — Captain Nathan 
E. Niles, of Wellsboro, Commander of the 
Maine. 

J. Philip Schmand, of Wellsboro, now so- 
journing in New York City, is one of the 
most distinguished portrait painters in 
America, and numbers among his sitters 
not only many prominent Americans but 
many of the foreign potentates who have 



128 TALES OF TIOGA 

visited this country during the last ten 
years. 

Walter T. Merrick, for twelve years 
Naval Officer of the Port of Philadelphia; 
Dr. R. Y. Sullivan, one of the leading phy- 
sicians of Washington, D. C. ; Dr. John 
E. Bacon, now a State Senator, the lead- 
ing surgeon in the State of Arizona, pro- 
prietor of a private hospital at Miami, 
which has become renowned throughout 
the southwest ; Dr. H. J. Donaldson, Chief 
Surgeon of the Williamsport General Hos- 
pital, and whose reputation as a skillful 
operator is more than State-wide; Dr. J. 
B. Carnett of the faculty of the Univer- 
sity of Pennsylvania, and one of the 
most eminent surgeons of the State; Dr. 
Mary Baldwin, who for many years has 
been the leading physician in Newport, 
R. I., and her sister, Dr. Kate Baldwin, who 
is numbered among the leading physicians 
of Philadelphia. 

When President Wilson came to the 
point of selecting a Cabinet it seemed 
easy enough until he took up the new 
portfolio, that of Secretary of Labor. 
Where was he to find an expert to organ- 
ize a new department of the National 
Government? Where was he to find a 



WELLSBORO 129 

man who knew best and understood most 
perfectly the ambitions and desires of 
Labor, and who also had due regard for 
the relation of these ambitions and de- 
sires to the welfare of the country at 
large ? Quite naturally he turned for such 
a man to the State where the most work 
is done. And having invaded Pennsyl- 
vania on such a mission his destination 
was a foregone conclusion. He came to 
Tioga County and took William B. Wilson 
into his Cabinet. 

In this connection it is worth while to 
mention that at the wedding of Miss 
Eleanor Wilson to Mr. McAdoo, the guests 
invited to the White House were limited 
to the number of sixty. This was said 
to be due to the fact of the recent death 
of the bride's mother. Well, as might 
have been expected, Miss Agnes Wilson 
of Tioga County was among the guests. 

Either just north or just south of the 
New York State line lies the farm and 
homestead of Lawrence 0. Murray, for- 
merly Controller of the Currency; but as 
Elkland, Tioga County, two or three miles 
distant, is his postofRce and shipping and 
trading point, he desires to be numbered 
among us, and we cheerfully consent. 

9 



130 TALES OF TIOGA 

We might also mention William A. 
Stone, a former Governor of Pennsyl- 
vania; Eleanor Larrison, a distinguished 
literary woman and lecturer, residing in 
Chicago; Henry W. Williams, late a Jus- 
tice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ; 
Ada Bache Cone, famous as a journalist, 
and for years a special correspondent from 
Paris to leading English and American 
magazines; Morton S. Bailey, at present 
one of the Justices of the Supreme Court 
of Colorado; Thomas A. Crichton, for- 
merly Deputy Auditor General under two 
administrations, and the present Cashier 
of the State Treasury; H. H. Rockwell, 
born in Lawrence Township, now residing 
in Elmira, New York, and who formerly 
represented in Congress the Schemung, 
Gates, Steuben and Schuyler District; 
Major Cassius M. Gillette, well known to 
Philadelphians in connection with the 
turning up of scandals growing out of the 
Torresdale and Lardner's Point Filtration 
Plants, and to the country generally in 
connection with the conviction of Greene 
and Gaynor on proofs furnished by him 
to the War Department as to scandals in 
Savannah and Charleston harbors; Dr. 
Myra Reynolds, professor of English lit- 



WELLSBORO 131 

erature, Chicago University; Frederic W. 
Fleitz, who resigned as First Deputy At- 
torney General of Pennsylvania after a 
continuous service of eleven years to de- 
vote himself to private practice ; Margaret 
Bailey, instructor in German at Smith 
College, Massachusetts; E. A. Van Val- 
kenburg, President and Editor of 'The 
North American" newspaper, Philadel- 
phia; Timothy W. Evans, Assistant Gen- 
eral Manager, New York Central Railroad, 
with headquarters at New York; M. J. 
McMahon, who although still a young man, 
is General Traffic Manager, New Orleans 
Great Northern Railroad, with headquar- 
ters at New Orleans ; Fred E. Beauge, Sec- 
retary, Central Pennsylvania Lumber Com- 
pany, headquarters Williamsport. 

Reminiscences of this kind would be 
inexcusably careless if mention was omit- 
ted of that remarkable triumvirate, our 
Edwards boys. These brothers, Thomas 
H., William C, and J. G. Edwards, have 
held at different times pretty nearly all 
the public offices in the State of Kansas, 
from Governor down. They have been 
Legislators, Registers of Wills, Post Mas- 
ters of Wichita, Cabinet officers, etc. All 
this might have happened at home, but 



132 TALES OF TIOGA 

they have done some things peculiar to 
their surroundings. For instance, one of 
them is a pioneer and one of the chief 
promoters of the Dry Farming Congresses 
which have revolutionized the State and 
put it in the forefront of the agricultural 
communities of the world. But this re- 
markable Edwards family, true to the 
Tioga County tradition, left the flower of 
the flock at home. 

During the session of the Legislature 
of 1915, Governor Brumbaugh held sev- 
eral conferences with leading members of 
both Houses, in order to explain and dis- 
cuss his legislative program. The pre- 
siding officers and three other members 
of each House were invited to these con- 
ferences. No surprise was occasioned by 
the fact that two of the three members 
invited from the House were sons of 
Tioga County — Henry L Wilson repre- 
senting Jefferson County, and George W. 
Williams of Wellsboro. 

Dr. Isadore Unger of Ithaca, New York, 
the leading physician (by common con- 
sent) of that University town; Ray Pres- 
ton Bowen, professor of Romance lan- 
guages, Huron College, South Dakota; 
Rev. Clayton R. Bowen, professor of the 



WELLSBORO 133 

New Testament, Meadville Theological 
College, Meadville, Pa.; Charles Grosvenor 
Osgood, professor of English, Princeton 
University; Augustus F. Shaw, professor 
of Mathematics in the Missionary College, 
Sao Paulo, Brazil; Benjamin J. Bowen, 
Traffic Engineer and Director, New Eng- 
land (Bell) Telephone Company, Boston; 
Dr. Emily Reynolds, at one time Presi- 
dent of Rockford College, Illinois; Henry 
Hastings, nominally Auditor and Assist- 
ant Treasurer of The Pittsburgh-Shaw- 
mut Railroad Company, and who holds the 
same offices in the Shawmut Mining Com- 
pany, with headquarters at St. Mary's, 
Pa. I am informed, however, by those 
having knowledge of the facts upon which 
to base such a judgment, that he is and 
has been for many years the controlling 
mind in both these prosperous and well- 
managed corporations. 

John I. Mitchell, one of the most promi- 
nent figures in public life during the last 
generation. Elected to a full term in the 
United States Senate in 1881. Elected to 
the Superior Court of Pennsylvania in 
1900; George C. Signor, formerly super- 
intendent of the Medico-Chirurgical Hos- 
pital, Philadelphia, and at present Super- 



134 TALES OF TIOGA 

infendent of the State Institution for the 
Feeble-Minded and Epileptic at Spring 
City, Chester County. His administrative 
methods in connection with this great in- 
stitution have attracted the attention of 
all persons connected with the executive 
and fiscal departments of the State gov- 
ernment, and the result of his manage- 
ment has been to establish the high-water 
mark for scientific efficiency and economy 
of cost, as well as for intelligent, sympa- 
thetic and humane treatment of the un- 
fortunates under his care. 

Simon B. Elliott at the age of eighty- 
six is a very active member of the State 
Forestry Reservation Commission. Mr. 
Elliott's career has been very noteworthy. 
Many years ago he was a member of the 
Legislature from Tioga County and at 
that time had established a reputation 
for being the most skillful mining engi- 
neer and the most learned geologist in the 
northern tier. In 1883 he was employed 
by the Bell, Lewis & Yates Coal Mining 
Company to purchase and develop large 
tracts of coal areas in the western part 
of the State, and opened and operated as 
General Manager what was for some 
twenty years the largest producing mine 



WELLSBORO 135 

in the world. Six years after Mr. Elliott 
took charge of the operations of this com- 
pany, it purchased the Buffalo, Rochester 
& Pittsburgh Coal & Iron Company, and 
Mr. Elliott was made General Manager 
of this company also. After the con- 
solidation the output of coal rose to the 
enormous figures of 14,000,000 tons an- 
nually, and never fewer than 5,000 miners 
were employed. He is one of the most 
widely learned men in the State, and his 
interest in all current topics is unflagging. 
Every faculty and function of body and 
mind is fully preserved, and contact with 
him is an educational pleasure. Henry 
G. Kress, for many years owner and 
editor of the Manitowoc Herald (Wis- 
consin), one of the most influential news- 
papers of the northwest. As postmaster 
of that city he has just completed the 
longest term ever held by any man in 
the United States where Presidential 
nomination and confirmation by the Sen- 
ate is required. Hamlin E. Cogswell, 
Supervisor of Music in the public schools 
of the District of Columbia. 

We are proud to mention as specimen 
products of Tioga County, John B. Emery 
and James Thomas, both of Williamsport, 



136 TALES OF TIOGA 

for many years past and at present among 
the most prominent in business and civic 
affairs in that model city; John W. Ryon, 
who migrated to Pottsville, Schuylkill 
County, acknowledged by the bar of the 
State to have been the greatest land 
lawyer of his time; Norman H. Ryan 
(spelled by the other members of this 
distinguished family ''Ryon"), who left 
our county to locate in Illinois, where he 
became one of the leaders of the Bar of 
that State, and incidentally served in 
many important public positions, includ- 
ing Legislator, Presidential Elector, etc.; 
Homer B. Howe, distinguished as one of 
the highest authorities in the State on 
scientific fruit culture, and now General 
Manager of the Fleitz-Sproul farms in 
Cumberland, Columbia and Wyoming 
Counties; Edwin S. Potter, one of the 
Editors of "Equity," one of the leading 
journals of progressive thought in the 
country ; Frank Hastings, President of the 
Second National Bank of Altoona, one of 
the ablest bankers in the State, and ad- 
mittedly the most popular man in the city 
of his adoption; Dr. Merton English, one 
of the leading physicians of Washington, 
D. C. ; Homer Cox, Chief Engineer of the 



WELLSBORO 137 

Scranton Water & Gas Company; Harry 
L. Dartt, Chief Engineer of the Scranton 
Traction Company; George D. Mitchell, 
one of the founders and the present editor 
of "The Pathfinder," published at Wash- 
ington, D. C. ; Alfred J. Niles, Assistant 
City Solicitor of Philadelphia; Stephen 
Stone, one of the leading corporation law- 
yers of Pittsburgh and in the forefront 
of the junior bar of the State; Charles N. 
Kimball of Sistersville, West Virginia, 
who, though still in middle life, has a 
state-wide reputation as a lawyer and 
publicist, and was one of the most potent 
factors in bringing about prohibition of the 
liquor traffic in that State; John C. Knox, 
Judge Advocate of the United States 
Army during the Civil War, Attorney 
General of Pennsylvania, and Justice of 
the Supreme Court. 

The mention of distinguished emigrants 
from Tioga who either have done or are 
doing a large measure of the world's 
work might be continued "till the cows 
come home," and as stated in the begin- 
ning probably the most distinguished 
have been thoughtlessly omitted. All 
fields of human activities have been sue- 



138 TALES OF TIOGA 

cessfully invaded — the so-called learned 
professions, war, politics, the fine arts, 
literature, and the sciences. 

The records of the War Department re- 
veal the fact that Pennsylvania furnished 
more volunteer soldiers to the Union 
Army during the Civil War, in propor- 
tion to its population, than did any other 
State, and that Tioga furnished a greater 
proportion to its population than did any 
other county in Pennsylvania. So much 
for Tioga's fighting edge and patriotism. 

It has been said by some one who spoke 
with authority that central England is so 
rich with legends and folklore that every 
square mile would furnish themes for a 
volume of poetry or romance. The same 
might be said of every square furlong of 
Tioga County. And but for the untimely 
death of George W. Sears, better known 
under his pen name ''Nessmuk," traveler, 
woodcraftsman, philosopher, and our 
local great poet, this wealth of raw ma- 
terial would no doubt have been trans- 
formed into "something rich and strange," 
and Tioga would have come into her own. 
Poor Nessmuk! Poor Humanity! With- 
out education, except his knowledge of 



WELLSBORO 139 

English Poetry and of the great book of 
Nature; with a fragile body and poor 
health; with nothing between him and 
chill penury but the cobbler's trade, the 
wonder is that he did so much in the realm 
of true poetry. If his life had been lived 
under fortunate auspices — I am not as- 
suming to define what fortunate auspices 
for a poet might be — the "Divine spark'' 
which he certainly possessed might have 
been kindled earlier and burned more 
steadily. But instead of indulging in vain 
regret, we should congratulate ourselves 
that our heritage from Nessmuk is so 
great. He has a following, a cult among 
choice spirits which is nation wide — Si cult 
as surely as has Browning or Walt Whit- 
man. The devotees of Nessmuk delight 
in the memory of his spirit, and of his 
written word, and rejoice in their hearts 
with a secret gusto at the consciousness 
that nature has endowed them with the 
spirit and the temperament to know and 
love her from Nessmuk's peculiar angle 
of vision. Nessmuk was not only a poet, 
he was a naturalist, big game hunter, 
trout fisherman, wise in woodcraft, and 
a philosopher. His social views were ex- 



140 TALES OF TIOGA 

tremely radical — to use mild terms — and 
were regarded by his conventional and 
conservative neighbors as those of a near- 
outlaw. I suspect that the extreme lan- 
guage in which his opinions were often 
expressed was somewhat of a pose, an 
overexpression of his real views — but 
the practice persisted, however, for a life- 
time and colored much of his writ- 
ings. Three characteristics overshadow 
all others in his works, and the reader is 
almost always conscious of all three, 
whether the form be verse or prose. First, 
is the poetic impulse, the Divine afflatus; 
second, the wisdom of the great naturalist 
and nature lover; and, third, his bitter and 
cynically expressed dissatisfaction at the 
existing social order. That these were the 
most outstanding features of his character 
may be easily demonstrated in the most 
agreeable manner. James Whitcomb Riley 
never saw Nessmuk in the flesh, but he did 
know his poems; and just about the time 
of Nessmuk's death Riley published on ode 
to "Nessmuk." I incorporate the ode here 
with the gracious permission of the author 
and his publishers. How regrettable that 
it did not meet Nessmuk's eye! 



WELLSBORO 141 

*NESSMUK 

"I hail thee, Nessmuk, for the lofty tone 
Yet simple grace that marks thy poetry! 
True forester thou art, and still to be, 

Even in happier fields than thou hast known. 

Thus, in glad visions, glimpses am I shown 
Of groves delectable — "preserves" for thee, 
Ranged but by friends of thine — I name thee 
three. 

First, Chaucer, with his bald old pate new-grown 
With changeless laurel; next, in Lincoln-green, 

Gold-belted, bowed and bugled, Robin Hood; 
And next, Ike Walton, patient and serene; 

These three, O Nessmuk, gathered hunter-wise. 

Are camped on hither slopes of Paradise, 
To hail thee first and greet thee, as they should." 

What a complete understanding is herein 
displayed ! Many chapters, a volume, might 
and should be written about Nessmuk, but 
the writer is mute after reading such an 
exquisite summation, such a lyric gem, 
such a perfect exemplification of "multum 
in parvo." 

In passing I must not fail to remark 
that he did more to bring the attention 
of the public to the Adirondack region than 



*From the Biographical Edition of the Complete 
Works of James Whitcomb Riley, Copyright 1913, 
Used by special permission of the publishers, The 
Bobbs-Merrill Company. 



142 TALES OF TIOGA 

any one else, except perhaps Murray; and 
is also the author of ''Forest Runes," and 
"Woodcraft," the latter now used as a 
text-book by Boy Scouts. 

Some worthy successor to Nessmuk is 
certain to arise in our midst and find ready 
at hand this mine of rough poetic jewels. 
He will find his latitude great, ranging 
from pastoral to epic themes. I am moved 
to substantiate this assertion to those 
blessed with imagination by giving a few 
truthful tales which the most unsympa- 
thetic and prosaic must admit are clothed 
in a truly poetic atmosphere. The follow- 
ing will be recognized as a bucolic theme. 

A prominent man in Wellsboro, after- 
wards prominent throughout the state, 
owned a cow. Keeping a cow for domestic 
needs is common with rich and poor in 
Wellsboro. The cov/ got sick, and a local 
cow doctor was called. He made an exam- 
ination, pronounced the case grave and 
requested the calling of another cow doc- 
tor for consultation. All good cow doctors 
are convivial. Consultation was had, but 
no diagnosis agreed upon. In fact, a dis- 
pute arose, one holding to ''wolf in the 
tail," the other to "lost cud." The only 
common opinion was that a third cow doc- 



WELLSBORO 143 

tor, who owned a cow book, should be 
called in consultation. This was done, and 
after the cow book had been read aloud for 
an hour by the light of a lantern, in the 
presence of the other doctors and the cow, 
the owner of the book pronounced the case 
"hollerhorn." Each contended firmly for 
his opinion, but all agreed that hot bran 
mash mixed with spiritus frumenti (scien- 
tific name for drug store whiskey) was 
desirable for the cow under any theory of 
disease. This was requisitioned, and later 
in the evening the prescription was re- 
filled. The consultation continued during 
the entire night, and towards morning the 
cow died. The doctors skinned the cow 
and divided her raiment among them in 
consideration for professional services. 
The owner paid for a decent burial and 
the medicine. The cause of death remains 
a scientific mystery. 

This tale, though certainly pastoral, may 
be thought to be too tragic in its ending, 
and I will, therefore, add a couple more 
specimens against which this objection 
cannot be urged by the future poet when 
hunting material. 

Uncle Jimmy Kelly was for many years 
Station Agent of the old Fall Brook Rail- 



144 TALES OF TIOGA 

road, the first to penetrate our County, at 
Tioga Village. Those were the "good old 
days," .and customs were different from 
those of the present time. Sixty years ago 
Uncle Jimmy not only kept the station- 
house, but in the same building he kept a 
boardinghouse and inn, a grocery store and 
grogshop. 

In his latter years he lived with his 
daughter, Mrs. Peter Donehue, near 
Mitchell's Creek. He was possessed of 
much native ability and had a rudimentary 
education, as might be inferred from the 
important position he held in the com- 
munity for so many years. 

Once upon a time, when Uncle Jimmy 
was about ninety years of age, a friend 
of mine and I found ourselves in Uncle 
Jimmy's neighborhood. After visiting 
scenes of many youthful exploits, my 
friend proposed that we visit Uncle Jimmy, 
in the hope of getting him to relate a par- 
ticular bit of philosophy with which my 
friend was familiar, but which I never 
had heard at first hand. We tramped a 
mile under the sun to Peter Donehue's 
house and found the old man comfortably 
seated in a commodious armchair, looking 
hale and hearty. He greeted us cheerily 



WELLSBORO 145 

and my friend began maneuvering to draw 
the desired recital. Although we were con- 
vinced that our host knew at once what 
we wished, a full half hour was occupied 
in backing and filling before the spirit 
moved him, when he spoke as follows : "I 
must tell you a bit of wisdom I learned 
from Lord Chesterfield, the best-mannered 
and finest gentleman in England. His son 
was away at school and his father wrote 
him like this : 'Me son (says Lord Chester- 
field), as your going through life there's 
but two alter-natives, says he, aither the 
extreamest politeness or the sword; lave 
janglin' to weemen.' " 

The mention of Peter Donehue reminds 
me of an anecdote of that dignified Irish- 
man which should be here noted. Done- 
hue's dwelling house was not far below 
that of Captain Buel Baldwin, father-in- 
law of the late Judge John I. Mitchell. In 
a certain year the buckwheat crop in Tioga 
County gave unusual promise of abund- 
ance, but early in September there came a 
killing frost and the buckwheat was laid 
prostrate and completely ruined. Mr. 
Donehue reviewed the havoc in his field 
in the morning with a calm but sad heart. 
He crossed the road and found the same 
-. 10 



146 TALES OF TIOGA 

condition on the old Mulford farm, and 
then moved up the road to Captain Bald- 
win's. Just as he came to a view of the 
ruin in the Captain's fields he encountered 
the Captain himself, and the following 
formal exchange took place : "Fine morn- 
ing, Mr. Donehue," said Captain Baldwin. 
"Fine morning. Captain Baldwin," said 
Mr. Donehue. "Have you any other obser- 
vation on the weather you would like to 
make, Mr. Donehue?" said Captain Bald- 
win. "I have no further observation to 
make on the weather, Captain Baldwin," 
said Mr. Donehue, "but I would like to 
make one general observation." "What is 
it, Mr. Donehue?" said Captain Baldwin. 
"Allow me to observe. Captain Baldwin," 
said Mr. Donehue, "that it is a wonderful 
war when every man's killed." After 
which cryptic utterance Mr. Donehue with- 
out further delay betook himself home- 
ward. 

The next idyl suggests the lyric. 

A certain well-known painter of our 
town was possessed of intermittent bibu- 
lous habits, which (it is just to state) have 
been abandoned for more regular ones of 
a less taxing nature. A prominent lady 
made an engagement with the painter for 



WELLSBORO 147 

a certain day to wax and polish floors. The 
painter failed to appear and the lady- 
lodged a protest with her husband, as if 
he were a party to the transaction, about 
the painter's non-appearance. The hus- 
band suggested, by way of excuse, that he 
had heard that a few days past the painter 
had met with an accident, that he had 
''fallen off the water wagon." Nothing 
more was said on the subject. But as the 
particular sprinkling cart that passed 
daily before the lady's house was very high 
above the trucks, she was, as subsequent 
events proved, sufficiently impressed. 

A few days later the painter appeared. 
He was made welcome and went to work. 
The lady and painter being on friendly 
terms, she congratulated him upon getting 
so well over his accident. The painter, 
without displaying his guilty conscious- 
ness and being really curious to know what 
the lady had in mind, asked what accident 
she referred to. She replied that she had 
heard that he had fallen off the water 
wagon. The painter took in the situation 
at a glance and gravely stated that he was 
lucky to get off without broken bones, and 
that in the future he would take no more 
chances with a water wagon. Of course. 



148 TALES OF TIOGA 

it was the painter who gave the story cur- 
rency, as he was the only person in pos- 
session of all the fun at the beginning. 

By means of a natural and orderly pro- 
gression we may be said to have reached 
the epic stage, and having reached it our 
material is ready at hand. 

A CHRISTMAS TREE AT MT. ZION 
CHURCH 

When the writer was a young man he 
was elected Justice of the Peace at Wells- 
boro and served a term in that ancient and 
honorable office. Among other duties was 
that of cutting the tips off the ears of 
noxious animals killed by hunters for the 
bounties as well as for the pelts. One 
day about the middle of January, Mr. 
Jonas Smith, a well-known resident of 
Charleston Township, which lies adjacent 
to Wellsboro on the east, came into my 
office with a gunnysack over his shoulder 
filled with fox pelts. Smith's personal ap- 
pearance was indeed startling. One arm 
was in a sling on his breast; one eye was 
concealed by a bandage passing round the 
head and tied at the back, while the other 
eye, though open, was "black" down to 
the cheek bone. The lower half of one ear 



WELLSBORO 149 

seemed to be held in place with adhesive 
plaster, and a patch of the same material 
about an inch square adhered to the top of 
a lump on the point of his jaw. 

Smith was a very husky, two-fisted indi- 
vidual, quiet and inoffensive enough when 
sober, but quarrelsome and pugnacious 
when drunk. He delighted in a brawl just 
for the love of it, and without much care 
as to consequences. He had a band of pals 
living in the same neighborhood, of the 
same general characteristics — all delight- 
ing in whiskey and brawls in varying pref- 
erence, some preferring whiskey to brawls, 
some brawls to whiskey. 

These enterprising citizens of Charles- 
ton, for a period covering some years, 
were wont to come down from their native 
haunts from time to time and enliven the 
pastoral quiet of the village, first by quick- 
ening the stream of commerce at the sev- 
eral hotel bars, and then beating up various 
of our citizens, and usually getting, inci- 
dentally, beaten up in return. 

Time and wisdom have softened the 
enthusiasm of these jolly souls and they 
are now quite sedate and well-ordered; 
that is, those who have not succumbed to 
the unequal fight with booze. 



150 TALES OF TIOGA 

Upon the occasion of the fox pelts, 
Smith dropped into a chair, apparently a 
good deal exhausted by his walk into town, 
and after I had looked him over with mani- 
fest interest, the following conversation 
ensued: "Was it a railroad collision?" I 
said, to which Jonas replied with a mild 
*'No." "Dynamite explosion?" I inquired, 
to which he made the same laconic reply, 
"No." "Were you run over by a traction 
engine?" I ventured. Same rejoinder, "No." 
My curiosity now being thoroughly en- 
listed, I abandoned my suggestive form of 
interrogatory and said: "Well, Jonas, what 
was it?" To which he replied simply, 
"Christmas tree up at Mount Zion 
Church." 

It is here stated for the benefit of those 
unfortunates whose education is defective 
by reason of unfamiliarity with Wellsboro 
and vicinity that Mount Zion Church is a 
modest Gothic temple crowning a height of 
ground in the middle of a Maxfield Parish 
landscape, and is distant about one mile 
from the borough limits and about two 
miles from the heart of the town. For 
many years past, owing to the improved 
means of conveyance and the number and 
commodiousness of the village churches. 



WELLSBORO 151 

services at Mount Zion Church have been 
intermittent and mostly social or religo- 
social in character, as, for instance, a 
''Christmas tree." 

When Jonas informed me that the cause 
of his battered and forlorn condition was 
a Christmas tree at Mount Zion Church, 
my surprise and amusement, though great, 
were dissembled, for I wanted details, and 
Jonas was in a serious mood and not dis- 
posed to mirth. After considerable coax- 
ing I got this plain, unvarnished tale: 

"Well, it was like this: A few of the 
boys — Archie LaMont, Duffy Jacobs, Mont 
Bellinger, Dock Jones and myself — thought 
we would come downtown and celebrate 
Christmas Eve a little, but as there was 
nothin' much goin' on down here we started 
home early to hang up our stockin's, and 
had to walk. When we got up to the Poor 
House turn we noticed Mount Zion Church 
all lighted up, and when we got up to the 
church we peeked in the windows and saw 
it was a neighborhood party. In one of 
the front corners was a big Christmas tree 
all covered over with gold and silver lace, 
and lighted up with candles. There was 
all kinds of presents on it, and some that 
was too big to hang was huddled round 



152 TALES OF TIOGA 

under it. So we all walked in and took 
seats in the front. Everything was going 
along all right till one of the boys (Archie, 
I think) asked Mrs. Schimpf whether 
Santy Glaus had left anything particular 
for him or whether he should just help 
himself. Just after this I remember of 
seein' John Ludlam reach up and pick off 
a double-bladed axe handle with a pink 
ribbon tied on it, and at the same time I 
saw Frank Peake reach for a new Bissell 
carpet sweeper with a blue ribbon tied on 
it, and then I seen Gharley Schimpf reach 
for a stove poker that didn't have any rib- 
bon tied on it. When I came to, my head 
was kind of muggy and it was dark. I 
reached around and found wood on three 
sides of me and first thought I was in a 
coffin. But I reached up and found Archie 
doubled over the back of a pew, and then 
I knew the Ghristmas tree was over. I 
found the other boys scattered round the 
church, and when I made 'em understand 
that the Ghristmas tree was over we 
went home. I haven't heard from the 
others, but Fve been abed ever since. This 
is my first appearance. But vve certainly 
had a livelier time than as if we had stayed 
downtown." 



WELLSBORO 153 

Upon glancing over the foregoing pages 
I discover that in the Tioga output of world 
figures the scientific group seems to be the 
only one ''bogging down at the knees." 
This apparent lapse is due to the chron- 
icler and not to Tioga, however. It is pro- 
posed to redeem this oversight with one 
fell swoop. In 1869, in the town of Car- 
diff, Onondaga County, near Syracuse, 
New York, was discovered the Cardiff 
Giant, which set the scientific world agog. 
The giant was ten and one-half feet tall, 
and was apparently a perfect specimen of 
a prehistoric race. Some one was inquisi- 
tive enough to saw the giant in two, 
whereupon it was declared to be a solid 
block of gypsum. In 1878 the Colorado 
Giant was discovered in the state from 
which it took its name. This discovery 
also focused the attention of the scientific 
world, for this was no gypsum block, but 
a real antediluvian man, made of bones, 
flesh, blood and the gray-matter of the 
brain, and the scientific world was "backed 
out of the ring." But some one got drunk 
and peached, and the ''cat was out of the 
bag." 

George Hull was the sole inventor and 
builder of both of these gigantic hoaxes. 



154 TALES OF TIOGA 

the Colorado Giant having been built in an 
abandoned ice house on the main street of 
Elkland, Tioga County, at a cost of $12,000. 
It is worth noting that P. T. Barnum con- 
tributed $2,000 to the fund. It is admitted 
that the Colorado Giant is our great scien- 
tific exploit and that Hull is our greatest 
scientist and charlatan. In the latter capac- 
ity he easily outclassed all contemporaries, 
and "sufficient unto the day is the evil 
thereof." Even genius cannot be expected 
to anticipate the future, and Cassie Chad- 
wick, Madame Humbert and Dr. Cook were 
not as yet pacemakers in the world of 
charlatanism — ''Honor to whom honor is 
due." We remember George Hull grate- 
fully. But ''something too much of this." 
When this rambling and formless chap- 
ter was begun the primary purpose was to 
tell something of the scenic and atmos- 
pheric beauties of Tioga County; of the 
good-fellowship, charity and hospitality of 
its people. For, notwithstanding their in- 
tellectual triumphs, the cultivation of the 
social amenities has always been held to be 
the paramount consideration in life. To 
do justice to the picturesque and unique 
beauties of Wellsboro would require the 
space of a volume and is far beyond my 



WELLSBORO 155 

powers. Moreover, being "native here and 
to the manner born," I might be accused 
of partiality, and I shall, therefore, conclude 
by quoting the words of a total stranger 
as to the impressions made upon him by a 
first visit. And I shall assure the reader 
that the old town is not receiving more 
than it deserves by quoting from the cyn- 
ical and flint-hearted Optimist of the 
North American, Mr. Leigh Mitchell 
Hodges, who wrote as follows : '*My stock 
of optimism was considerably enlarged the 
other day. I paid a visit to Wellsboro, 
which is in Tioga County, Pennsylvania. 
* * * When the oldest locomotive en- 
gineer in the country puts on the brakes 
at Wellsboro depot, you are stunned. You 
begin to wonder if the recent trip was 
across the Styx instead of over the late 
lamented Chauncey Depew's rails, for this 
surely looks like what you pictured in your 
mind when you used to bubble out the bass 
of ''0, Paradise! 0, Paradise!" 

The sleek conductor dispels your dream, 
however, by shouting the name of the 
place, and you have to accept the surround- 
ings into which you have been jerked as 
only a sample of what the upper story of 
the hereafter will be like. 



156 TALES OF TIOGA 

And, having seen the sample, I'm going 
to be as good as I know how to be. 
* * * 'VVellsboro is a parcel of homes 
dropped down in a lovely valley. On every 
side of it are hills which look as if they 
were hewn from massive emeralds, save 
where yellow patches of grain shine gold- 
like in the sun or fields of buckwheat 
spread like snow along the slopes. 

And there are elms in Wellsboro which 
would make a Connecticut Yankee do some 
tall thinking. I have an idea that the man 
who invented ^'Spotless Town" was there 
once. I know very well that the person 
who wrote that wailful hymn about there 
being a happy home "beyond this vale of 
woe" was never there. 

But, then, when one has seen some of 
the small towns of our country, the Puritan 
plan of placing all the pleasant things on 
the other side of the river doesn't carry 
much weight with it. 

Wellsboro has a county jail for the ac- 
commodation of unfortunates who live 
elsewhere. From its grated windows is 
just such a view as some folks travel to 
Switzerland to get. The penal problem in 
Wellsboro consists chiefly in devising 
ways and means for keeping non-residents 



WELLSBORO 157 

out of jail. So attractive are the sur- 
roundings that sentimental persons from 
New York State are constantly trying to 
break in. 

There are some hundred and some resi- 
dences, large and small, in the place, and 
every one of them is a home. 

Because of this fine fact the back yards 
are just as well kept as those in the front. 
Folks take care of homes, you know. And 
some of these homes are very handsome, 
but that doesn't make a whit of difference 
with the people who live in them. 

So far as I could learn, there is only one 
snob in Wellsboro, and that one is under a 
slab of granite so gray in a cemetery so 
pleasant that Fd rather be asleep in it 
than awake in many another place. * * * 

Wellsboro is noted for statesmen, celery, 
cut glass and rich yellow cream; also for 
its pretty women. To walk a block in the 
town without meeting an ex or active offi- 
cial of some high sort is almost as much 
of an impossibility as to go the same dis- 
tance without kind of wishing you had 
joined the Mormons that time you had a 
chance. 

The most unpopular man in the place is 
kindly treated by his neighbors, though I 



158 TALES OF TIOGA 

don't think he deserves to be; and while 
there is no such thing as poverty among 
any of the inhabitants, there is charity 
plus. The sort of charity that you find 
only in small towns. The sort that makes 
it a real privilege to be sick for a spell. 

I've traveled through this land of ours 
in several different directions. Within the 
last nine months I've done some 22,000 
miles of railroading and kept my eyes open 
on the way, for I'm from Missouri and 
want to be shown. And it's mighty satis- 
fying to feel that right here, within the 
borders of our own Keystone State, I've 
found the prize town of its size." 



